IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/renene/v51y2013icp404-418.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Investigation of species transport in a gas diffusion layer of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell through two-phase modelling

Author

Listed:
  • Hossain, Mamdud
  • Islam, Sheikh Zahidul
  • Pollard, Patricia

Abstract

A two-phase polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell model has been developed to investigate transport of species in a gas diffusion layer taking into account effects of liquid water saturation. A set of governing equations for mass, momentum, species concentration involving oxygen, hydrogen, water vapour and liquid water together with electrochemical reaction equations have been solved under computational fluid dynamics technique. The effects of presence of liquid water on the effective diffusivity of species have been investigated. A thorough comparison study of liquid water saturation model using power law with various exponential factors and a percolation based model has been carried out. The simulation results show that the power law model with exponential factor of 2 provides a good representation of species diffusivity and produces much closer agreement with experimental cell voltage, while the percolation based model produces overprediction of cell voltage. The effects of isotropic and anisotropic permeability of gas diffusion layer have also been studied and the simulated results show that the high isotropic permeability or a combination of high in-plane and low through-plane permeability results in higher performance of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell. The fuel cell performance significantly deteriorates with low in-plane and high through-plane permeability of gas diffusion layer.

Suggested Citation

  • Hossain, Mamdud & Islam, Sheikh Zahidul & Pollard, Patricia, 2013. "Investigation of species transport in a gas diffusion layer of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell through two-phase modelling," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 404-418.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:51:y:2013:i:c:p:404-418
    DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2012.10.008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148112006453
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.renene.2012.10.008?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. Yu, Li-jun & Ren, Geng-po & Qin, Ming-jun & Jiang, Xiu-min, 2009. "Transport mechanisms and performance simulations of a PEM fuel cell with interdigitated flow field," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 530-543.
    2. Mishra, Bikash & Wu, Junxiao, 2009. "Study of the effects of various parameters on the transient current density at polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell start-up," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 2296-2307.
    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. Deng, Hao & Wang, Dawei & Xie, Xu & Zhou, Yibo & Yin, Yan & Du, Qing & Jiao, Kui, 2016. "Modeling of hydrogen alkaline membrane fuel cell with interfacial effect and water management optimization," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 166-177.
    2. Keller, Nico & von Unwerth, Thomas, 2022. "Advanced parametric model for analysis of the influence of channel cross section dimensions and clamping pressure on current density distribution in PEMFC," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 307(C).
    3. Ozden, Adnan & Shahgaldi, Samaneh & Li, Xianguo & Hamdullahpur, Feridun, 2018. "A graphene-based microporous layer for proton exchange membrane fuel cells: Characterization and performance comparison," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 485-494.
    4. Wu, Horng-Wen, 2016. "A review of recent development: Transport and performance modeling of PEM fuel cells," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 81-106.
    5. Lu, Xu & Leung, Dennis Y.C. & Wang, Huizhi & Maroto-Valer, M. Mercedes & Xuan, Jin, 2016. "A pH-differential dual-electrolyte microfluidic electrochemical cells for CO2 utilization," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 277-285.
    6. Saberian, Ayad & Sajadiye, Seyed Majid, 2019. "The effect of dynamic solar heat load on the greenhouse microclimate using CFD simulation," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 722-737.
    7. Singdeo, Debanand & Dey, Tapobrata & Gaikwad, Shrihari & Andreasen, Søren Juhl & Ghosh, Prakash C., 2017. "A new modified-serpentine flow field for application in high temperature polymer electrolyte fuel cell," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 195(C), pages 13-22.

    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. Movahedi, M. & Ramiar, A. & Ranjber, A.A., 2018. "3D numerical investigation of clamping pressure effect on the performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell with interdigitated flow field," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 617-632.
    2. Abdollahzadeh, M. & Pascoa, J.C. & Ranjbar, A.A. & Esmaili, Q., 2014. "Analysis of PEM (Polymer Electrolyte Membrane) fuel cell cathode two-dimensional modeling," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 478-494.
    3. Hou, Yongping & Shen, Caoyuan & Hao, Dong & Liu, Yanan & Wang, Hong, 2014. "A dynamic model for hydrogen consumption of fuel cell stacks considering the effects of hydrogen purge operation," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 672-678.
    4. Tavakoli, B. & Roshandel, R., 2011. "The effect of fuel cell operational conditions on the water content distribution in the polymer electrolyte membrane," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 36(12), pages 3319-3331.
    5. Ramiar, A. & Mahmoudi, A.H. & Esmaili, Q. & Abdollahzadeh, M., 2016. "Influence of cathode flow pulsation on performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell with interdigitated gas distributors," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 206-217.
    6. Hossain, Mamdud & Islam, Sheikh Zahidul & Colley-Davies, Amy & Adom, Ebenezer, 2013. "Water dynamics inside a cathode channel of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 763-779.
    7. Kong, Im Mo & Jung, Aeri & Kim, Beom Jun & Baik, Kyung Don & Kim, Min Soo, 2015. "Experimental study on the start-up with dry gases from normal cell temperatures in self-humidified proton exchange membrane fuel cells," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 93(P1), pages 57-66.

    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:renene:v:51:y:2013:i:c:p:404-418. 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.journals.elsevier.com/renewable-energy .

    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.