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Lattice Boltzmann Simulations of Water Transport from the Gas Diffusion Layer to the Gas Channel in PEFC

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2015

Koji Moriyama  and
Takaji Inamuro
Koji Moriyama*
Affiliation:
Fundamental Research Center, Honda R&D Co. Ltd., Saitama 351-0193, Japan Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
Takaji Inamuro*
Affiliation:
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan Advanced Research Institute of Fluid Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
*
Corresponding author.Email:[email protected]
Email:[email protected]
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Abstract

Water management is a key to ensuring high performance and durability of polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC), and it is important to understand the behavior of liquid water in PEFC. In this study, the two-phase lattice Boltzmann method is applied to the simulations of water discharge from gas diffusion layers (GDL) to gas channels. The GDL is porous media composed of carbon fibers with hydrophobic treatment, and the gas channels are hydrophilic micro-scale ducts. In the simulations, arbitrarily generated porous materials are used as the structures of the GDL. We investigate the effects of solid surface wettabilities on water distribution in the gas channels and the GDL. Moreover, the results of X-ray computed tomography images in the operating PEFC are compared with the numerical simulations, and the mechanism of the water transport in PEFC is considered.

Keywords

76M2876T1076S0565D18Two-phase lattice Boltzmann methodpolymer electrolyte fuel cellX-ray CT imaginggas diffusion layer
Type
Research Article
Information
Communications in Computational Physics , Volume 9 , Issue 5 , May 2011 , pp. 1206 - 1218
Copyright
Copyright © Global Science Press Limited 2011

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