Simulation of liquid water beakthrough in a nano-tomography reconstruction of a carbon paper gas diffusion layer
Pratap Rama
Yu Liu
Rui Chen
Hossein Ostadi
Kyle Jiang
Yuan Gao
Xiaoxian Zhang
Rosemary Fisher
Michael Jeschke
2134/8344
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Simulation_of_liquid_water_beakthrough_in_a_nano-tomography_reconstruction_of_a_carbon_paper_gas_diffusion_layer/9228407
This study reports the feasibility of newly simulating liquid water intrusion into the porous gas diffusion
layer (GDL) of a polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) using X-ray nano-tomography and two-phase
lattice Boltzmann (LB) simulation. A digital 3D model of the GDL is reconstructed using X-ray nanotomography
while two-phase porous flow is simulated at two different levels of surface wettability by
applying a newly-developed numerical LB model. The results show liquid infiltration in a hydrophobic
GDL is comparatively lower (pore saturation of 0.11 to 0.90) than that for a hydrophilic GDL (pore
saturation of 0.36 to 0.96) over the liquid intrusion range of 1 kPa . 100 kPa. Visualisation of simulated
results in three dimensions reveal dissimilar liquid infiltration characteristics for the two levels of
wettability considered, yet also reveal a general breakthrough of liquid water at a pressure of 10 kPa
due to specific structural features of the GDL.
2011-05-04 15:06:13
Polymer electrolyte fuel cell
Gas diffusion layer
Porous flow simulation
Lattice Boltzmann
X-ray nano-tomography
Microscopic flow
Two-phase flow
Pore size distribution
Liquid intrusion
Hydrophobic
Hydrophilic
Engineering not elsewhere classified