Cho, JIS;
Neville, TP;
Trogadas, P;
Bailey, J;
Shearing, P;
Brett, DJL;
Coppens, MO;
(2018)
Capillaries for water management in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells.
International Journal of Hydrogen Energy
, 43
(48)
pp. 21949-21958.
10.1016/j.ijhydene.2018.10.030.
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Abstract
Some of the new liquid water management systems in polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells hold great potential in providing flood-free performance and internal humidification. However, current water management systems entail major setbacks, which either inhibit implementation into state-of-the-art architectures, such as stamped metal flow-fields, or restrict their application to certain channel configurations. Here, a novel water management strategy is presented that uses capillary arrays to control liquid water in PEMFCs. These capillaries are laser-drilled into the land of the flow-fields and allow direct removal (wicking) or supply of water (evaporation), depending on the local demand across the electrode. For a 6.25 cm2 active area parallel flow-field, a ∼92% improvement in maximum power density from capillary integration was demonstrated. The proposed mechanism serves as a simple and effective means of achieving robust and reliable fuel cell operation, without incurring additional parasitic losses due to the high pressure drop associated with conventional serpentine flow-fields.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Capillaries for water management in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2018.10.030 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2018.10.030 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | Fuel cell, Water management, Capillary, Laser drilling, Wicking, Flooding |
| 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 UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Electronic and Electrical Eng |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10061159 |
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