Mass Transport Limitations of Water Evaporation in Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell Gas Diffusion Layers

Adrian Mularczyk, Andreas Michalski, Michael Striednig, Robert Herrendörfer, Thomas J. Schmidt, Felix N. Büchi and Jens Eller
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Adrian Mularczyk: Electrochemistry Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland
Andreas Michalski: Electrochemistry Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland
Michael Striednig: Electrochemistry Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland
Robert Herrendörfer: Institute of Computational Physics (ICP), Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), CH-8401 Winterthur, Switzerland
Thomas J. Schmidt: Electrochemistry Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland
Felix N. Büchi: Electrochemistry Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland
Jens Eller: Electrochemistry Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 10, 1-21

Abstract: Facilitating the proper handling of water is one of the main challenges to overcome when trying to improve fuel cell performance. Specifically, enhanced removal of liquid water from the porous gas diffusion layers (GDLs) holds a lot of potential, but has proven to be non-trivial. A main contributor to this removal process is the gaseous transport of water following evaporation inside the GDL or catalyst layer domain. Vapor transport is desired over liquid removal, as the liquid water takes up pore space otherwise available for reactant gas supply to the catalytically active sites and opens up the possibility to remove the waste heat of the cell by evaporative cooling concepts. To better understand evaporative water removal from fuel cells and facilitate the evaporative cooling concept developed at the Paul Scherrer Institute, the effect of gas speed (0.5–10 m/s), temperature (30–60 °C), and evaporation domain (0.8–10 mm) on the evaporation rate of water from a GDL (TGP-H-120, 10 wt% PTFE) has been investigated using an ex situ approach, combined with X-ray tomographic microscopy. An along-the-channel model showed good agreement with the measured values and was used to extrapolate the differential approach to larger domains and to investigate parameter variations that were not covered experimentally.

Keywords: polymer electrolyte fuel cell; GDL; evaporation; water; diffusion; convection; saturation; modelling; humidity; PEFC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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