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On the role of the microporous layer in PEMFC operation

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007 - MPL breakthru.pdf (2.48 MB)

Date

2009-03-01

Authors

Gostick, Jeffrey Thomas
Ioannidis, Marios A.
Fowler, Michael W.
Pritzker, Mark D.

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Elsevier

Abstract

The condition of liquid water breakthrough at the cathode of polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEMFC) is studied experimentally and data on corresponding water saturation and capillary pressure are provided for gas diffusion layers (GDL) with and without a microporous layer (MPL). The data demonstrate that the GDL saturation at water breakthrough is drastically reduced from ca. 25% to ca. 5% in the presence of MPL This observation is consistent with considerations of invasion percolation in finite-size lattices and suggests an explanation for the role of MPL in improving PEMFC performance at high current densities.

Description

The final publication is available at Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.elecom.2008.12.053 © 2017. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Keywords

Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell, Gas diffusion layer, Microporous layer, Water management, Capillary pressure, Percolation

LC Keywords

Citation

URI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.elecom.2008.12.053
 http://hdl.handle.net/10012/12835

Collections

Waterloo Research
Chemical Engineering