LAPSE:2023.32417
Published Article
LAPSE:2023.32417
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, Jens Eller
April 20, 2023
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
convection, diffusion, evaporation, GDL, humidity, Modelling, PEFC, polymer electrolyte fuel cell, saturation, Water
Suggested Citation
Mularczyk A, Michalski A, Striednig M, Herrendörfer R, Schmidt TJ, Büchi FN, Eller J. Mass Transport Limitations of Water Evaporation in Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell Gas Diffusion Layers. (2023). LAPSE:2023.32417
Author Affiliations
Mularczyk A: Electrochemistry Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland [ORCID]
Michalski A: Electrochemistry Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland [ORCID]
Striednig M: Electrochemistry Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland
Herrendörfer R: Institute of Computational Physics (ICP), Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), CH-8401 Winterthur, Switzerland
Schmidt TJ: Electrochemistry Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland; Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, ETH Zürich, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland
Büchi FN: Electrochemistry Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland [ORCID]
Eller J: Electrochemistry Laboratory, Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland [ORCID]
Journal Name
Energies
Volume
14
Issue
10
First Page
2967
Year
2021
Publication Date
2021-05-20
Published Version
ISSN
1996-1073
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Original Submission
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PII: en14102967, Publication Type: Journal Article
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LAPSE:2023.32417
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doi:10.3390/en14102967
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