The impacts of the gas diffusion layer contact angle on the water management of the proton exchange membrane fuel cells: Three‐dimensional simulation and optimization

Abstract

Summary Water management of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is an important parameter to improve efficiency, especially in cold weather conditions. The generated water of the electrochemical reactions inside PEMFC may stay inside the cell and fill the pores in the gas diffusion layer (GDL), which degrades the cell and reduces the lifetime. The formation of water in PEMFC has a direct relationship with the capillary pressure that can be determined by the GDL's wettability and microstructure. Furthermore, wettability is dependent on the material, which can be changed by the contact angles of the GDL. Using the computational fluid dynamic (CFD) methods, different values of the GDL's contact angle have been examined to observe their corresponding effects on the maximum GDL liquid removal. Higher values of the GDL liquid removal result in better water management. Using the simulation data, an artificial neural network (ANN) model was trained in the current density of 0.4 (A/cnormalm2) and the voltage of 0.604 (V) to predict the GDL liquid removal in 5700 points and to develop the optimization analysis. Results indicated that the highest GDL liquid removal of 0.225 (kg/normalm3s) can be obtained by the GDL's contact angle of 102.63°. Highlights PEMFC three‐dimensional simulation model with seven path serpentine flow field. The impacts of GDL contact angle on the maximum GDL liquid removal. Training an ANN model to calculate the maximum GDL liquid removal. At the contact angle of 102.63°, maximum GDL liquid removal is 0.225 [kg/normalm3s].

Towards Reliable Prediction of Performance for Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells via Machine Learning-Integrated Hybrid Numerical Simulations

“…However, GDL surface wettability changes due to the loss of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) during mechanical compression cycles [287,288] and various degradation mechanisms [289,290], which are responsible for altering PTFE distribution. Even though GDL has a heterogeneous wettability [291,292] and its corresponding capillary pressure, P c [293], most of the CFD modeling involves implementing a single contact angle for the whole GDL. In addition to that, the effect of the surface roughness of GDL is important for effective water management [294], which is always neglected during numerical investigation.…”

“…Likewise, CL and ML have also been implemented in the field of GDL for feature extraction [296][297][298], optimization [290][291][292][293][294][295][296][297][298][299][300][301], and degradation [302,303], though they particularly do not consider the degradation of GDL. Mahdaviara et al [297] implemented 2D and 3D U-net deep learning models for multiphase segmentation of images from high-resolution X-ray tomography (micro-CT).…”

The thermodynamic and life-cycle assessments of a novel charging station for electric vehicles in dynamic and steady-state conditions

“…Fuel cells are electrochemical devices, which produce electricity in an environmentally friendly manner 6 . Fuel cells are considered competitive alternatives for fossil-based devices due to lower emissions and better efficiencies and they have overall advantage over batteries in the terms of energy density as mentioned by Ref.…”

Performance Characterization of the Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) Using the Lattice Boltzmann Modeling (LBM)

“…In addition to the usage of MPL, controlling the capillary pressure in those regions are proven efficient method to prevent the formation of breakthroughs [15]. To control the capillary pressure, the microstructure and the wettability of the porous regions can be modified [16]. In other words, water management and the formation of breakthroughs in the GDL can be improved by the changes in the microstructure of the GDL [17].…”