Quantitative measurement and comparison of breakthroughs inside the gas diffusion layer using lattice Boltzmann method and computed tomography scan

Hossein Pourrahmani; Milad Hosseini; Hamza Moussaoui; Emad Oveisi; Majid Siavashi; Jan Van Herle

doi:10.1038/s41598-024-60148-w

Quantitative measurement and comparison of breakthroughs inside the gas diffusion layer using lattice Boltzmann method and computed tomography scan

Sci Rep. 2024 Apr 26;14(1):9621. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-60148-w.

Authors

Hossein Pourrahmani¹, Milad Hosseini², Hamza Moussaoui³, Emad Oveisi⁴, Majid Siavashi², Jan Van Herle³

Affiliations

¹ Group of Energy Materials, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 1951, Sion, Switzerland. hossein.pourrahmani@epfl.ch.
² School of Mechanical Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran.
³ Group of Energy Materials, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 1951, Sion, Switzerland.
⁴ Interdisciplinary Centre for Electron Microscopy (CIME), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.

Abstract

In Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs), the presence of residual water within the Gas Diffusion Layer (GDL) poses challenges during cold starts and accelerates degradation. A computational model based on the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) was developed to consider the capillary pressure inside the PEMFC and to analyze the exact geometries of the GDLs, which were obtained using the Computed Tomography scan. The novelty of this study is to suggest a methodology to compare the quantitative water removal performance of the GDLs without long-term experimental testing. Two different samples of GDLs were considered, pristine and aged. The results of quantitative measurements revealed the amount of water columns (breakthroughs) inside each sample. Considering the volume of 12,250,000 µm³ for each sample, the pristine and the aged samples are prone to have 774,200 µm³ (6.32%) and 1,239,700 µm³ (10.12%) as water columns in their porous domain. Micro-structural properties such as connectivity, mean diameter, effective diffusivity, etc. were also compared to observe the impacts of aging on the properties of the GDL.

Keywords: Computed tomography (CT) scan; Gas diffusion layer (GDL); Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM); Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC); Water columns (breakthrough).

Abstract

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