TY - JOUR AB - Recent experimental data on a fuel-cell-like system revealed insights into the fluid flow in both free and porous media. A computational model is used to investigate the momentum and species transport in such a system, solved using the finite element method. The model consists of a stationary, isothermal, diluted species transport in free and porous media flow. The momentum transport is treated using different formulations, namely, Stokes-Darcy, Darcy-Brinkman, and hybrid Stokes-Brinkman formulations. The species transport is given by the advection equation for a reactant diluted in air. The formulations are compared to each other and to the available experimental data, where it is concluded that the Darcy-Brinkman formulation reproduces the data appropriately. The validated model is used to investigate the contribution of convection in reactant transport in porous media of fuel cells. Convective transport provides a major contribution to reactant distribution in the so-called diffusion media. For a serpentine channel and flow with Re=260–590, convection accounts for 29–58% of total reactant transport to the catalyst layer. AU - Beruski,O AU - Lopes,T AU - Kucernak,ARJ AU - Perez,J DO - 10.1103/PhysRevFluids.2.103501 PY - 2017/// SN - 2469-990X TI - Investigation of convective transport in the so-called “gas diusion layer” used in polymer electrolyte fuel cell T2 - Physical Review Fluids UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.2.103501 UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/50832 VL - 2 ER -