scholarly journals Detection of Liquid Water in PEM Fuel Cells' Channels: Design and Validation of a Microsensor

Fuel Cells ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 520-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Conteau ◽  
C. Bonnet ◽  
D. Funfschilling ◽  
M. Weber ◽  
S. Didierjean ◽  
...  
Author(s):  
Luis Breziner ◽  
Peter Strahs ◽  
Parsaoran Hutapea

The objective of this research is to analyze the effects of vibration on the performance of hydrogen PEM fuel cells. It has been reported that if the liquid water transport across the gas diffusion layer (GDL) changes, so does the overall cell performance. Since many fuel cells operate under a vibrating environment –as in the case of automotive applications, this may influence the liquid water concentration across the GDL at different current densities, affecting the overall fuel cell performance. The problem was developed in two main steps. First, the basis for an analytical model was established using current models for water transport in porous media. Then, a series of experiments were carried, monitoring the performance of the fuel cell for different parameters of oscillation. For sinusoidal vibration at 10, 20 and 50Hz (2 g of magnitude), a decrease in the fuel cell performance by 2.2%, 1.1% and 1.3% was recorded when compared to operation at no vibration respectively. For 5 g of magnitude, the fuel cell reported a drop of 5.8% at 50 Hz, whereas at 20 Hz the performance increased by 1.3%. Although more extensive experimentation is needed to identify a relationship between magnitude and frequency of vibration affecting the performance of the fuel cell as well as a throughout examination of the liquid water formation in the cathode, this study shows that sinusoidal vibration, overall, affects the performance of PEM fuel cells.


Fuel Cells ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 530-544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin E. Kimball ◽  
Jay B. Benziger ◽  
Yannis G. Kevrekidis

Author(s):  
Hyun-Il Kim ◽  
Jin-Hyun Nam ◽  
Dong-Hoon Shin ◽  
Tae-Yong Chung ◽  
Young-Gyu Kim

Author(s):  
Nicholas Siefert ◽  
Chi-Hsin Ho ◽  
Shawn Litster

Liquid water management is a critical issue in the development of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells. Liquid water produced electrochemically can accumulate and flood the microchannels in the cathodes of PEM fuel cells. Since the liquid coverage of the cathode can fluctuate in time for two-phase flow, the rate of oxygen transport to the cathode catalyst layer can also fluctuate in time, and this can cause the fuel cell power output to fluctuate. This paper will report experimental data on the voltage loss and the voltage fluctuations of a PEM fuel cell due to flooding as a function of the number of parallel microchannels and the air flow rate stoichiometric ratio. The data was analyzed to identify general scaling relationships between voltage loss and fluctuations and the number of channels in parallel and the air stoichiometric ratio. The voltage loss was found to scale proportionally to the square root of the number of channels divided by the air stoichiometric ratio. The amplitude of the fluctuations was found to be linearly proportional to the number of microchannels and inversely proportional to the air stoichiometric ratio squared. The data was further analyzed by plotting power spectrums and by evaluating the non-linear statistics of the voltage time-series.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay B. Benziger ◽  
Tamara Whitaker ◽  
Erin Kimball ◽  
Ioannis G. Kevrekidis

Author(s):  
E. Tardy ◽  
F. Courtois ◽  
M. Chandesris ◽  
J.-P. Poirot-Crouvezier ◽  
A. Morin ◽  
...  

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