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Download fileLiquid water transport in porous metal foam flow-field fuel cells: a two-phase numerical modelling and ex-situ experimental study
journal contribution
posted on 2019-04-09, 08:17 authored by Ashley FlyAshley Fly, Kyoungmi Kim, John GordonJohn Gordon, Daniel ButcherDaniel Butcher, Rui ChenProton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) using porous metallic foam flow-field plates
have been demonstrated as an alternative to conventional rib and channel designs, showing high
performance at high currents. However, the transport of liquid product water through metal foam
flow-field plates in PEMFC conditions is not well understood, especially at the individual pore level.
In this work, ex-situ experiments are conducted to visualise liquid water movement within a metal
foam flow-field plate, considering hydrophobicity, foam pore size and air flow rate. A two-phase
numerical model is then developed to further investigate the fundamental water transport behaviour
in porous metal foam flow-field plates. Both the experimental and numerical work demonstrate that
unlike conventional PEMFC channels, air flow rate does not have a strong influence on water removal
due to the high surface tensions between the water and foam pore ligaments. A hydrophobic foam
was seen to transport liquid water away from the initial injection point faster than a hydrophilic foam.
In ex-situ tests, liquid water forms and maintains a random preferential pathway until the flow-field
edge is reached. These results suggest that controlled foam hydrophobicity and pore size is the best
way of managing water distribution in PEMFCs with porous flow-field plates.
Funding
This research was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant number EP/M023508/1 and EP/L015749/1, supported by the International Collaborative Energy Technology R&D Program of the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) and granted financial resources from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Republic of Korea (No. 20148520120160).
History
School
- Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
Department
- Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering
Published in
EnergiesVolume
12Citation
FLY, A. ... et al., 2019. Liquid water transport in porous metal foam flow-field fuel cells: a two-phase numerical modelling and ex-situ experimental study. Energies, 12(7): 1186.Publisher
© The Authors. Published by MDPI AGVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/Acceptance date
2019-03-26Publication date
2019-03-27Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by MDPI under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ISSN
1996-1073Publisher version
Language
- en