The development of improved water management strategies for the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) could stand to benefit from an improved understanding of the
surface and internal structure of the gas diffusion layer (GDL). The GDL is a fibrous porous material enabling mass transport between the PEMFC catalyst layer and flow fields. Fluorescence-based visualizations of liquid water droplet evaporation on GDL surfaces were performed to investigate water droplet pinning behaviours. The heterogeneous in-plane and through-plane porosity distributions of untreated GDLs were studied using computed tomography visualizations. The through-plane porosity distributions were utilized to calculate
heterogeneous local tortuosity, relative diffusivity, and permeability distributions. Finally, the heterogeneous through-plane porosity distributions of GDLs treated for increased hydrophobicity were investigated. This work provides new insight into GDL material properties to better inform future PEMFC models.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/25581 |
| Date | 31 December 2010 |
| Creators | Fishman, J. Zachary |
| Contributors | Bazylak, Aimy |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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