Performance Optimization and Water Management of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell with Two-Direction Graded Porosity Design of Cathode Gas Diffusion Layer
Publication: Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 147, Issue 2
Abstract
A three-dimensional nonisothermal two-phase flow model is developed to analyze the effects of cathode gas diffusion layer (GDL) porosity variations on the current density distribution and liquid water saturation in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Water phase changes among the vapor, liquid, and dissolved phases are considered in porous zones, whereas water transport in the channel is simplified by considering convection only. To investigate the current distribution quantitatively, the standard variance of current density over the cathode catalyst layer (CL) is applied. Aimed at improving the uniformity of current distribution in a cathode CL as well as further decreasing the liquid water in the cathode GDL, the optimization of graded porosity in a cathode GDL is conducted by parametric design in two directions, where one is the flow direction and the other is the thickness direction. Results indicate that compared with uniform porosity and porosity variations along a single direction, optimized porosity variations along two directions could achieve at most 18.3% improvement in current density distribution and a nearly 5% decrease in liquid water saturation in a high-current-density situation (operated at voltage 0.2 V). Thus, by applying porosity variations along two directions, fuel cell performance is improved and cell usable time is extended, which provides guidance for future material design on GDLs.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
Authors greatly acknowledge the support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51776079 and 51376004) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFB0603501-3).
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Published In
Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 147 • Issue 2 • April 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 18, 2020
Accepted: Nov 24, 2020
Published online: Jan 25, 2021
Published in print: Apr 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Jun 25, 2021
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