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The study examines the effect of gas diffusion layer design on PEM fuel cell performance, concluding that high electrical conductivity and permeability lead to better performance, while MPL presence can be detrimental.

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What they did

System
MFC

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Abstract

The influence of the different properties of the gas diffusion layer (GDL) on the operation of a liquid-cooled, proton-exchange polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEMFC) has been studied in this work. Three-dimensional numerical simulations (CFD) have been conducted to compare several commercial GDLs with different properties, analyzing their influence on the cell performance. Specifically, four GDLs (AvCarb P-75, SIGRACET 34BC, SIGRACET 34BA and Toray TGP-H-090) have been studied, two of them including a microporous layer (MPL). The effect of the MPL has been inspected by contrast of the results obtained with the same GDL, with or without MPL. Potentiostatic boundary conditions have been applied, varying the electric potential between 1.05 and 0.35 V to obtain a representative i−V curve with enough resolution. Detailed postprocessing tasks were carried out to gain a deeper understanding on the phenomena occurring within the cell for each GDL. It can be concluded from this work that a high electrical conductivity and a high permeability lead to a better fuel cell performance. On the other hand, although the presence of MPL provides lower permeability leading to a worse overall performance, it has been shown that the lack of it may result in membrane dehydration and cell degradation issues.

Key findings

  • High electrical conductivity and permeability of the GDL lead to improved fuel cell performance.
  • Presence of MPL can decrease overall performance due to lower permeability.
  • Commercial GDLs with different properties have varying effects on cell performance.

Keywords

Proton exchange membrane fuel cellMicroporous materialElectrolyteGaseous diffusionPermeability (electromagnetism)Porosity

Identifiers

DOI
10.3390/pr10071395
Journal
Processes
Year
2022