The through-plane thermal conductivity and the contact resistance of the components of the membrane electrode assembly and gas diffusion layer in proton exchange membrane fuel cells

A Comprehensive Fractal Approach in Determination of the Effective Thermal Conductivity of Gas Diffusion Layers in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells

“…al., (2014) have conducted the experiment setup using steady state method, developing the measure the through-plane thermal conductivity of the components in PEM and GDL at the different operating temperature. The thermal conductivities of the GDLs are investigated as a function of the PTFE loading, temperature and compression pressure (Alhazmi et al, 2014).…”

“…Then, the variation in thickness is almost negligible after increasing the pressure which indicates that the deformation of the GDL has "saturated". Alhazmi et al, (2014) claimed that there is a hysteresis effect in the compression curves which signals that there has been a permanent deformation in the compressed GDL sample. In Figure 2.8, shows the investigated effect of the applied load on the thermal resistance.…”

“…It is clear that the thermal resistance values of the treated GDLs are higher than that of the untreated GDL. This is due to the increase in the contact resistance between the fibers of the GDL after adding the PTFE (Khandelwal et al, 2006) (Alhazmi et al, 2014). (Alhazmi et al, 2014) 2.9.2 Effect of the temperature on the through-plane thermal conductivity in the PEM Figure 2.9 shows that the thermal conductivity of Nafion® decreases with increasing temperature, where the test temperature is defined as the average temperature across the test specimen.…”

“…This is due to the increase in the contact resistance between the fibers of the GDL after adding the PTFE (Khandelwal et al, 2006) (Alhazmi et al, 2014). (Alhazmi et al, 2014) 2.9.2 Effect of the temperature on the through-plane thermal conductivity in the PEM Figure 2.9 shows that the thermal conductivity of Nafion® decreases with increasing temperature, where the test temperature is defined as the average temperature across the test specimen. Although the downward trend in thermal conductivity is nearly within the error bar limit, this behavior of Nafion® may be explained on the basis of its structure and morphology (Chun et al, 1998) (Zhang et al, 2006).…”

“…The through-plane thermal conductivity of the GDL increasing with the temperature (Nikooee et al, 2011). function of the temperature for dry Nafion ® membrane (N112 and N117), error bar calculated at 15% (Alhazmi et al, 2014) …”