Water transport characteristics in the gas diffusion media of proton exchange membrane fuel cell – Role of the microporous layer

Nishiyama, Enju; Murahashi, Toshiaki

doi:10.1016/j.jpowsour.2010.09.055

Cited by 30 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…We obtained the PSD function by fitting the experimental data for a double-layered gas diffusion medium reported by Kumbur et al (21) and the total and hydrophilic PSD curves were well represented by two hydrophilic PSDs and four hydrophobic PSDs, as described in our previous report (14).…”

Section: Ecs Transactions 50 (2) 569-580 (2012)mentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Liquid saturation sl, can be calculated by integrating and summing for each region in which liquid water is present using log-normal distributions. The relationship between the pressure for water transport and liquid saturation for a GDL with an MPL was derived using the PSD functions (14). A similar relationship for the CCL was also derived using the PSD of the CCL.…”

Section: Ecs Transactions 50 (2) 569-580 (2012)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Role of the Cathode Microporous Layer in a PEMFC

2013

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The role of the cathode microporous layer (MPL) of the gas diffusion layer (GDL) in a polymer electrolyte exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) was investigated by comparing the performance of several cells containing different MPLs. The capillary pressure and permeability of the GDL play an important role in the transport of water generated in the PEMFC. MPLs were prepared with different hydrophobic agent contents to impart different water capillary pressures and hydrophobic properties. Under dry inlet air conditions, the cell without an MPL exhibited better performance than those with MPLs. In contrast, under wet inlet air conditions, the performance of the cell without an MPL decreased significantly at a relatively low current density, and the cell with the highest capillary pressure MPL exhibited the best performance. These experimental data were evaluated according to the water vapor activity of the cathode, which was modified with the capillary pressure of the MPL. As a result, the modified activity was determined to be a key factor to explain the occurrence of cathode flooding. Liquid water saturation in the diffusion media (GDL, MPL) and the cathode catalyst layer (CCL) are determined by the balance of capillary pressures of the pores of each layer. Increase of the diffusion resistance of oxygen in the CCL is significant, while that in the diffusion media is moderate, which indicates that the CCL is susceptible to flooding.

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Section: Ecs Transactions 50 (2) 569-580 (2012)mentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Ecs Transactions 50 (2) 569-580 (2012)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of the Cathode Microporous Layer in a PEMFC

2013

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“…This follows naturally form the fact that, under the modeling conditions, the right hand side of Equations (4) and (5) are independent of ε LDL . In fact the literature [22,30,31] shows that the concentration of oxygen c LDL=CDL O2 at the z 6 interface in Fig. 1 that could conceivably depend on ε LDL , is actually porosity-independent and thus adequately modeled using Equation (21).…”

Section: Analysis Of Performance Under Varying Materials Designsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The water vapor concentrations given by Equations (21) and (22), along with the saturation water vapor pressure at the interface located at z 6 , are substituted into Equation (23) to obtain after a rearrangement of terms the final equation for the water vapor flux…”

Section: A Single-phase Gas Flow Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%