Comparison of water management between two bipolar plate flow-field geometries in proton exchange membrane fuel cells at low-density current range

López, Ana M.; Barreras, Félix; Lozano, Antonio; Garcı́a, Juan Antonio; Valiño, Luis; Mustata, Radu

doi:10.1016/j.jpowsour.2008.12.082

Cited by 24 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…A range of flow-field designs have been proposed, including parallel [15], serpentine [16] [17] [18], interdigitated [19], bio-inspired [13] [20] [21], pin-type, [22] and cascade flow-fields [23]. Serpentine is the most commonly employed designs in the cathode for its superior water management capacity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of serpentine flow-field design on the water management of polymer electrolyte fuel cells: An in-operando neutron radiography study

Cho

Neville

et al. 2018

Journal of Power Sources

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In-depth understanding of the dynamics of water formation, accumulation and removal is important for flow-field design optimization to ensure robust performance and durability of polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs). Here, in-operando neutron radiography is used to display and quantify liquid water distribution across the entire active area of single-, double-and quad-channel serpentine flow-fields. The results revealed that the water management and performance of PEFCs is strongly affected by the number of serpentine channels in the cathode flow-field. The single-channel serpentine-based PEFC exhibits both a better cell performance and uniformity in the local water distribution. The quad-channel based PEFC exhibits the largest voltage fluctuations caused by severe water flooding in the gas channels. However, the single-channel design leads to significantly larger pressure drop than the multiple-channel counterparts, which requires much higher parasitic power to pressurize and recirculate the reactants. Three different regimes of operation can be defined based on the current density: gradually increasing hydration (< 400 mA cm-2), flooding (400 mA cm-2 ≤ j ≤ 600 mA cm-2) and drying out (>600 mA cm-2). The reduced overall quantity of water in the channels with an increase in current density can be attributed to faster gas velocity and higher cell temperature.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of serpentine flow-field design on the water management of polymer electrolyte fuel cells: An in-operando neutron radiography study

Cho

Neville

et al. 2018

Journal of Power Sources

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“…The results revealed that the co-flow (similar flow) gave the best uniformity in the volumetric transfer current while the counter-flow gave the highest cell performance. Lopez et al [12] was carried out the experimental investigation on water management by using transparent plastic BPs with PIS and cascade flow fields developed by their own. The authors stated that the cascade flow field provided a better management in the water produced by the chemical reaction than the PIS flow field.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of different flow field designs and number of channels on performance of a small PEFC

Limjeerajarus

Charoen-amornkitt

2015

International Journal of Hydrogen Energy

129

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“…These visualization techniques mainly include direct visualization, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging, beam interrogation, and fluorescence microscopy. Among these techniques, the direct visualization has the advantage of providing high temporal and spatial resolution information about water transport in the gas flow channels [15,16,42,[44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55], the smaller scale of the GDL pores [56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64] and the micro-scale of the catalyst surface [21] in an operating fuel cell. Because of the opaque nature of traditional GDL and bipolar plate materials, the investigation and diagnosis of liquid water transport dynamic in an operating PEM fuel cell is a challenging phenomenon using in situ visualization techniques.…”

Section: Visualization Of Liquid Water Distributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, the effect of GDL materials and their hydrophobicity on the liquid water transport was studied [21,49,64]. Besides, López et al [44] verified that saturated condition for the hydrogen gas flow at the anode side produces water condensation and channel flooding for the serpentine-parallel flow-field topology. The work of Yamauchi et al [46] shows that the flooding/plugging phenomena in the anode gas channel occur at low humidity when water is transported from the cathode to the anode through the membrane.…”

Section: Direct Visualizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Water Management in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells

2009

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At present, despite the great advances in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) technology over the past two decades through intensive research and development activities, their large-scale commercialization is still hampered by their higher materials cost and lower reliability and durability. In this review, water management is given special consideration. Water management is of vital importance to achieve maximum performance and durability from PEMFCs. On the one hand, to maintain good proton conductivity, the relative humidity of inlet gases is typically held at a large value to ensure that the membrane remains fully hydrated. On the other hand, the pores of the catalyst layer (CL) and the gas diffusion layer (GDL) are frequently flooded by excessive liquid water, resulting in a higher mass transport resistance. Thus, a subtle equilibrium has to be maintained between membrane drying and liquid water flooding to prevent fuel cell degradation and guarantee a high performance level, which is the essential problem of water management. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art studies of water management, including the experimental methods and modeling and simulation for the characterization of water management and the water management strategies. As one important aspect of water management, water flooding has been extensively studied during the last two decades. Herein, the causes, detection, effects on cell performance and mitigation strategies of water flooding are overviewed in detail. In the end of the paper the emphasis is given to: (i) the delicate equilibrium of membrane drying vs. water flooding in water management; (ii) determining which phenomenon is principally responsible for the deterioration of the PEMFC performance, the flooding of the porous electrode or the gas

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Comparison of water management between two bipolar plate flow-field geometries in proton exchange membrane fuel cells at low-density current range

Cited by 24 publications

References 18 publications

Effect of serpentine flow-field design on the water management of polymer electrolyte fuel cells: An in-operando neutron radiography study

Effect of serpentine flow-field design on the water management of polymer electrolyte fuel cells: An in-operando neutron radiography study

Effect of different flow field designs and number of channels on performance of a small PEFC

A Review of Water Management in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells

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