IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/appene/v93y2012icp39-44.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Numerical estimation of the effective electrical conductivity in carbon paper diffusion media

Author

Listed:
  • Zamel, Nada
  • Li, Xianguo
  • Shen, Jun

Abstract

The transport of electrons through the gas diffusion layer (GDL) of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells has a significant impact on the optimal design and operation of PEM fuel cells and is directly affected by the anisotropic nature of the carbon paper material. In this study, a three-dimensional reconstruction of the GDL is used to numerically estimate the directional dependent effective electrical conductivity of the layer for various porosity values. The distribution of the fibers in the through-plane direction results in high electrical resistivity; hence, decreasing the overall effective electrical conductivity in this direction. This finding is in agreement with measured experimental data. Further, using the numerical results of this study, two mathematical expressions were proposed for the calculation of the effective electrical conductivity of the carbon paper GDL. Finally, the tortuosity factor was evaluated as 1.7 and 3.4 in the in- and through-plane directions, respectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Zamel, Nada & Li, Xianguo & Shen, Jun, 2012. "Numerical estimation of the effective electrical conductivity in carbon paper diffusion media," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 39-44.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:appene:v:93:y:2012:i:c:p:39-44
    DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2011.08.037
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261911005472
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.apenergy.2011.08.037?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Das, Prodip K. & Li, Xianguo & Liu, Zhong-Sheng, 2010. "Effective transport coefficients in PEM fuel cell catalyst and gas diffusion layers: Beyond Bruggeman approximation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 87(9), pages 2785-2796, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bouziane, Khadidja & Khetabi, El Mahdi & Lachat, Rémy & Zamel, Nada & Meyer, Yann & Candusso, Denis, 2020. "Impact of cyclic mechanical compression on the electrical contact resistance between the gas diffusion layer and the bipolar plate of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 349-361.
    2. Li, Li & Fan, Wenguang & Xuan, Jin & Leung, Michael K.H. & Zheng, Keqing & She, Yiyi, 2017. "Optimal design of current collectors for microfluidic fuel cell with flow-through porous electrodes: Model and experiment," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 413-424.
    3. Yan, Xiaohui & Lin, Chen & Zheng, Zhifeng & Chen, Junren & Wei, Guanghua & Zhang, Junliang, 2020. "Effect of clamping pressure on liquid-cooled PEMFC stack performance considering inhomogeneous gas diffusion layer compression," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 258(C).
    4. Lo, An-Ya & Hung, Chin-Te & Yu, Ningya & Kuo, Cheng-Tzu & Liu, Shang-Bin, 2012. "Syntheses of carbon porous materials with varied pore sizes and their performances as catalyst supports during methanol oxidation reaction," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 66-74.
    5. Qiu, Diankai & Janßen, Holger & Peng, Linfa & Irmscher, Philipp & Lai, Xinmin & Lehnert, Werner, 2018. "Electrical resistance and microstructure of typical gas diffusion layers for proton exchange membrane fuel cell under compression," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 231(C), pages 127-137.
    6. Ye, Lingfeng & Qiu, Diankai & Peng, Linfa & Lai, Xinmin, 2022. "Microstructures and electrical conductivity properties of compressed gas diffusion layers using X-ray tomography," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 326(C).
    7. Pan, Mingzhang & Li, Chao & Liao, Jinyang & Lei, Han & Pan, Chengjie & Meng, Xianpan & Huang, Haozhong, 2020. "Design and modeling of PEM fuel cell based on different flow fields," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    8. Cao, Tao-Feng & Lin, Hong & Chen, Li & He, Ya-Ling & Tao, Wen-Quan, 2013. "Numerical investigation of the coupled water and thermal management in PEM fuel cell," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 1115-1125.
    9. Zhang, Heng & Xiao, Liusheng & Chuang, Po-Ya Abel & Djilali, Ned & Sui, Pang-Chieh, 2019. "Coupled stress–strain and transport in proton exchange membrane fuel cell with metallic bipolar plates," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 251(C), pages 1-1.
    10. Yanqin Chen & Chao Jiang & Chongdu Cho, 2019. "Characterization of Effective In-Plane Electrical Resistivity of a Gas Diffusion Layer in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells through Freeze–Thaw Thermal Cycles," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hwang, Jenn-Jiang, 2013. "Thermal control and performance assessment of a proton exchanger membrane fuel cell generator," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 184-193.
    2. Periklis Mountrichas & Wendi Zhao & Mehtab Singh Randeva & Prodip K. Das, 2023. "Entropy Generation of CuO-Water Nanofluid in a Cavity with an Intruded Rectangular Fin," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(2), pages 1-15, January.
    3. Liu, Huize & Hu, Zunyan & Li, Jianqiu & Xu, Liangfei & Shao, Yangbin & Ouyang, Minggao, 2023. "Investigation on the optimal GDL thickness design for PEMFCs considering channel/rib geometry matching and operating conditions," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 282(C).
    4. Zhao, Jian & Shahgaldi, Samaneh & Alaefour, Ibrahim & Xu, Qian & Li, Xianguo, 2018. "Gas permeability of catalyzed electrodes in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 203-210.
    5. Ashorynejad, Hamid Reza & Javaherdeh, Koroush, 2019. "Evaluation of passive and active lattice Boltzmann method for PEM fuel cell modeling," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 535(C).
    6. Zhang, Hongtao & Li, Xianguo & Liu, Xinzhi & Yan, Jinyue, 2019. "Enhancing fuel cell durability for fuel cell plug-in hybrid electric vehicles through strategic power management," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 241(C), pages 483-490.
    7. Namazi, Mohammadmehdi & Nayebi, Mohammadreza & Isazadeh, Amin & Modarresi, Ali & Marzbali, Iman Ghasemi & Hosseinalipour, Seyed Mostafa, 2022. "Experimental and numerical study of catalytic combustion and pore-scale numerical study of mass diffusion in high porosity fibrous porous media," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 238(PB).
    8. Aidan Robinson & Prodip K. Das, 2022. "Biomimetic and Constructal Design of Alveolus-Inspired Extended Surfaces for Heat Dispersion," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(1), pages 1-16, December.
    9. Vasile, Nicolò S. & Doherty, Ronan & Monteverde Videla, Alessandro H.A. & Specchia, Stefania, 2016. "3D multi-physics modeling of a gas diffusion electrode for oxygen reduction reaction for electrochemical energy conversion in PEM fuel cells," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 435-450.
    10. Durán, E. & Andújar, J.M. & Segura, F. & Barragán, A.J., 2011. "A high-flexibility DC load for fuel cell and solar arrays power sources based on DC-DC converters," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 88(5), pages 1690-1702, May.
    11. Xing, Lei & Das, Prodip K. & Song, Xueguan & Mamlouk, Mohamed & Scott, Keith, 2015. "Numerical analysis of the optimum membrane/ionomer water content of PEMFCs: The interaction of Nafion® ionomer content and cathode relative humidity," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 242-257.
    12. Ruzzante, Pascal & Li, Xianguo, 2023. "3D hybrid stochastic reconstruction of catalyst layers in proton exchange membrane fuel cells from 2D images," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 281(C).
    13. Jiao, Daokuan & Jiao, Kui & Zhong, Shenghui & Du, Qing, 2022. "Investigations on heat and mass transfer in gas diffusion layers of PEMFC with a gas–liquid-solid coupled model," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 316(C).
    14. Ferreira, Rui B. & Falcão, D.S. & Oliveira, V.B. & Pinto, A.M.F.R., 2017. "1D+3D two-phase flow numerical model of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 474-495.
    15. Shingjiang Jessie Lue & Nai-Yuan Liu & Selvaraj Rajesh Kumar & Kevin Chi-Yang Tseng & Bo-Yan Wang & Chieh-Hsin Leung, 2017. "Experimental and One-Dimensional Mathematical Modeling of Different Operating Parameters in Direct Formic Acid Fuel Cells," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-14, November.
    16. Andersson, M. & Beale, S.B. & Espinoza, M. & Wu, Z. & Lehnert, W., 2016. "A review of cell-scale multiphase flow modeling, including water management, in polymer electrolyte fuel cells," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 757-778.
    17. Pan, Mingzhang & Li, Chao & Liao, Jinyang & Lei, Han & Pan, Chengjie & Meng, Xianpan & Huang, Haozhong, 2020. "Design and modeling of PEM fuel cell based on different flow fields," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    18. Zhang, Heng & Xiao, Liusheng & Chuang, Po-Ya Abel & Djilali, Ned & Sui, Pang-Chieh, 2019. "Coupled stress–strain and transport in proton exchange membrane fuel cell with metallic bipolar plates," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 251(C), pages 1-1.
    19. Najiyah Safwa Khashi’ie & Norihan Md Arifin & Ioan Pop, 2020. "Mixed Convective Stagnation Point Flow towards a Vertical Riga Plate in Hybrid Cu-Al 2 O 3 /Water Nanofluid," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(6), pages 1-21, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:appene:v:93:y:2012:i:c:p:39-44. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.