Study on Gas Transport Performance in Perforated Gas Diffusion Layer by Lattice Boltzmann Method

• Published in: Transport in porous media 2022, Vol.141 (2), p.417-438
• Main Authors: Jiang, Ziheng, Yang, Guogang, Shen, Qiuwan, Li, Shian, Liao, Jiadong, Wang, Hao, Sheng, Zhonghua, Ying, Ruomeng, Li, Zheng, Zhang, Guoling, Zhang, Hongpeng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Civil Engineering; Classical and Continuum Physics; Diffusion coefficient; Diffusion layers; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Gas transport; Gaseous diffusion; Geotechnical Engineering & Applied Earth Sciences; Hydrogeology; Hydrology/Water Resources; Industrial Chemistry/Chemical Engineering; Mathematical analysis; Optimization; Permeability; Porosity; Proton exchange membrane fuel cells; Transport properties
• ISSN: 0169-3913; 1573-1634
• DOI: 10.1007/s11242-021-01726-8

Gas diffusion layer (GDL) plays a very important role in the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), and changing the GDL structure becomes a good way to improve the PEMFC performance. GDL with different perforation diameters and perforation depths are established by the stochastic reconstruction method. The perforation filling amount is introduced to simulate the reservoir effect of the perforated structure, and the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is used to computationally study the gas transport performance within the perforated GDL. The results show the perforated structure can significantly improve the gas transport performance, and the influence on each porosity structure varies when containing different perforated filling amounts. When the porosity is larger, the effective diffusion coefficient of perforated structure is lower than that of non-perforated structure with less filling amount. The calculation of anisotropic permeability reveals that the through-plane permeability is greater than the in-plane permeability when the perforation reaches a certain depth, and the optimal perforation diameter and depth in each structure are analyzed from the perspective of maximizing the average permeability in the through-plane direction. Article highlights The complete structure of the gas diffusion layer was stochastic reconstructed and perforated. The effects of different perforation structures on the gas transport properties were mainly investigated by Lattice Boltzmann method, and the presence of a homogeneous filler inside the perforation was considered. The optimal parameters of different perforated structures and GDL porosity structures were compared and analyzed.