Imperial College London
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ProfessorMartinBlunt

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Earth Science & Engineering

Chair in Flow in Porous Media
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 6500m.blunt Website

 
 
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Location

 

2.38ARoyal School of MinesSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Mularczyk:2021:10.1021/acsami.1c04560,
author = {Mularczyk, A and Lin, Q and Niblett, D and Vasile, A and Blunt, MJ and Niasar, V and Marone, F and Schmidt, TJ and Büchi, FN and Eller, J},
doi = {10.1021/acsami.1c04560},
journal = {ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces},
pages = {34003--34011},
title = {Operando liquid pressure determination in polymer electrolyte fuel cells.},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsami.1c04560},
volume = {13},
year = {2021}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Extending the operating range of fuel cells to higher current densities is limited by the ability of the cell to remove the water produced by the electrochemical reaction, avoiding flooding of the gas diffusion layers. It is therefore of great interest to understand the complex and dynamic mechanisms of water cluster formation in an operando fuel cell setting as this can elucidate necessary changes to the gas diffusion layer properties with the goal of minimizing the number, size, and instability of the water clusters formed. In this study, we investigate the cluster formation process using X-ray tomographic microscopy at 1 Hz frequency combined with interfacial curvature analysis and volume-of-fluid simulations to assess the pressure evolution in the water phase. This made it possible to observe the increase in capillary pressure when the advancing water front had to overcome a throat between two neighboring pores and the nuanced interactions of volume and pressure evolution during the droplet formation and its feeding path instability. A 2 kPa higher breakthrough pressure compared to static ex situ capillary pressure versus saturation evaluations was observed, which suggests a rethinking of the dynamic liquid water invasion process in polymer electrolyte fuel cell gas diffusion layers.
AU  - Mularczyk,A
AU  - Lin,Q
AU  - Niblett,D
AU  - Vasile,A
AU  - Blunt,MJ
AU  - Niasar,V
AU  - Marone,F
AU  - Schmidt,TJ
AU  - Büchi,FN
AU  - Eller,J
DO  - 10.1021/acsami.1c04560
EP  - 34011
PY  - 2021///
SN  - 1944-8244
SP  - 34003
TI  - Operando liquid pressure determination in polymer electrolyte fuel cells.
T2  - ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsami.1c04560
UR  - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34235914
UR  - https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.1c04560
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/90342
VL  - 13
ER  -
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