Comparison of perforated and serpentine flow fields on the performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Subramaniam, Shanmugasundaram; Rajaram, Gukan; Palaniswamy, Karthikeyan; Jothi, Vasanth Rajendran

doi:10.1016/j.joei.2016.04.006

Cited by 22 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are a promising clean power source for a wide range of portable, automotive and stationary applications and this is in particular due to its high efficiency and low-temperature start-up [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Gas diffusion layers (GDLs) are key components in PEMFCs [7][8][9][10]. The GDL is a porous layer sandwiched between the catalyst layer (CL) and the flow-field plate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many researchers have investigated the effects of the MPL and its composition on the performance of PEFCs [7,9,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. The areas of research in this regard are typically on the effects of loading of the wet-proofing agent [25, 27-28, 31, 45], type of carbon black [6,22,26,32] and carbon loading [21,25,[27][28]45].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They found that the cell performs better with the sintered MPL loaded with Acetylene Black carbon and this is mainly due to the uniform distribution of the PTFE loading in the sintered MPL. It is worth mentioning that sintering is performed to coalesce the PTFE particles by subjecting them to a temperature close to their melting point and consequently uniformly distribute them in the MPL [8]. Similarly, the PTFE loading in the carbon substrate has an influence on the overall performance of the PEMFCs [23,25,[27][28].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Through-plane gas permeability of gas diffusion layers and microporous layer: Effects of carbon loading and sintering

Orogbemi

Ingham

Ismail

et al. 2018

Journal of the Energy Institute

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) eprints@whiterose. AbstractKnowledge of the absolute permeability for the various porous layers is necessary to obtain accurate profiles for water saturation within the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) in a twophase model of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). In this paper, the gas permeability of gas diffusion layers (GDLS) coated with micro-porous layers (MPLs) of various carbon loadings for two different carbon blacks have been experimentally measured.The permeability of the GDL was found to decrease by at least one order of magnitude after the MPL-coating. Also, the permeability of the MPLs was shown to be lower than that of the carbon substrate by 2-3 orders of magnitude. Further, it was found that the gas permeability of the MPLs changes significantly from one carbon loading to another despite the use of a single weight composition for all the MPLs coated, namely 20% PTFE and 80% carbon black. This signifies the possible inaccuracy in estimating the MPL permeability through employing the cross-section SEM images as they do not resolve the MPL penetration into the carbon substrate.Finally, the MPL sintering was found to slightly decrease the permeability of the GDL.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Through-plane gas permeability of gas diffusion layers and microporous layer: Effects of carbon loading and sintering

Orogbemi

Ingham

Ismail

et al. 2018

Journal of the Energy Institute

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Flow-field plates are important components for PEFCs; they provide the necessary mechanical compression to hold individual components together and they introduce oxidant (air) and fuel (hydrogen) to the respective electrodes [4,5]. A wide range of flow-fields have been developed, incorporating serpentine, parallel, interdigitated, pin, mesh, cascade, perforated and biomimetic designs [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. A major operational issue that could be impacted by the structure of the flow-field is accumulation of water in the channels and under the land areas, especially at the cathode [6,[15][16][17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A lung-inspired printed circuit board polymer electrolyte fuel cell

Bethapudi

Hack

Trogadas

et al. 2019

Energy Conversion and Management

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Fractal cathode flow-fields, inspired by the flow mechanism of air inside lungs, can provide homogeneous, scalable and uniform distribution of reactants to polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) electrodes. However, the complex 3D flow-fields demonstrated previously face manufacturing challenges, such as requiring selective laser sintering, an additive manufacturing method that is expensive to scale up. Here, a lung-inspired cathode flow-field is introduced and fabricated using low-cost, lightweight printed circuit boards (PCB). The uniformity and alignment between individual PCB layers producing the fractal hierarchy of flow channels have been characterised using X-ray computed tomography (X-ray CT). The performance of the fractal flow-field exceeds that of conventional single-serpentine flow-fields and is particularly beneficial when operating on air with a low relative humidity. The lung-2 inspired design is shown to lead to a more stable operation than the single-serpentine design, as a result of uniform distribution of reactants.

show abstract

“…the GDL without the MPL, is often called the carbon substrate; the latter term will be used in this work. Notably, most of the modelling studies treat the carbon substrate and the MPL as a single component that normally has the characteristics of the carbon substrate [11,20,23,[25][26][27]. However, the relevant experimental studies have shown that the MPL has physical properties that are different to those of the carbon substrate by up to 2-3 orders of magnitudes [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the gas permeability of the microporous layer used in polymer electrolyte fuel cells

Orogbemi

Ingham

Ismail

et al. 2018

Journal of the Energy Institute

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In an attempt to obtain accurate values of the gas permeability of the microporous layer (MPL), substrates with negligible MPL penetration and of known gas permeability, i.e. membrane filters, have been employed. The values of the MPL permeability obtained using the membrane filters were compared with those obtained conventionally using the carbon substrates. Due to MPL penetration, the MPL permeability obtained using the carbon substrate were found to decrease with carbon loading. On the other, due to negligible penetration, the MPL permeability obtained using the membrane filters were found to be almost invariant with the carbon loadings. Furthermore, the MPL permeability was found to be sensitive to the substrate used: more cracks (and subsequently substantially higher permeability) were shown by the MPLs coating the carbon substrates. This implies that the MPLs coating the carbon substrates and the MPLs coating the membrane filters are structure-wise different. It subsequently means that the MPL permeability obtained using the membrane filters cannot be used to estimate the MPL penetration into the carbon substrates.

show abstract

Comparison of perforated and serpentine flow fields on the performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Cited by 22 publications

References 16 publications

Through-plane gas permeability of gas diffusion layers and microporous layer: Effects of carbon loading and sintering

Through-plane gas permeability of gas diffusion layers and microporous layer: Effects of carbon loading and sintering

A lung-inspired printed circuit board polymer electrolyte fuel cell

On the gas permeability of the microporous layer used in polymer electrolyte fuel cells

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About