Trogadas, P;
Cho, JIS;
Neville, TP;
Marquis, J;
Wu, B;
Brett, DJL;
Coppens, M-O;
(2017)
A lung-inspired approach to scalable and robust fuel cell design.
Energy & Environmental Science
10.1039/C7EE02161E.
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Abstract
A lung-inspired approach is employed to overcome reactant homogeneity issues in polymer electrolyte fuel cells. The fractal geometry of the lung is used as the model to design flow-fields of different branching generations, resulting in uniform reactant distribution across the electrodes and minimum entropy production of the whole system. 3D printed, lung-inspired flow field based PEFCs with N = 4 generations outperform the conventional serpentine flow field designs at 50% and 75% RH, exhibiting a B20% and B30% increase in performance (at current densities higher than 0.8 A cm2 ) and maximum power density, respectively. In terms of pressure drop, fractal flow-fields with N = 3 and 4 generations demonstrate B75% and B50% lower values than conventional serpentine flow-field design for all RH tested, reducing the power requirements for pressurization and recirculation of the reactants. The positive effect of uniform reactant distribution is pronounced under extended current-hold measurements, where lung-inspired flow field based PEFCs with N = 4 generations exhibit the lowest voltage decay (B5 mV h1 ). The enhanced fuel cell performance and low pressure drop values of fractal flow field design are preserved at large scale (25 cm2 ), in which the excessive pressure drop of a large-scale serpentine flow field renders its use prohibitive.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | A lung-inspired approach to scalable and robust fuel cell design |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1039/C7EE02161E |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.1039/C7EE02161E |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2017. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Chemical Engineering |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10040406 |
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