In-plane and through-plane gas permeability of carbon fiber electrode backing layers

By J. Gostick, Michael W. Fowler, M. Pritzker, Marios Ioannidis, L. Behra. 2006

553 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The absolute gas permeability of several common gas diffusion layer (GDL) materials for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells was measured. Measurements were made in three perpendicular directions to investigate anisotropic properties. Most materials were found to display higher in-plane permeability than through-plane permeability. The permeability in the two perpendicular in-plane directions was found to display significant anisotropy. Materials with the most highly aligned fibers showed the highest anisotropy and the permeability could differ by as much as a factor of 2. In-plane permeability was also measured as the GDL was compressed to different thicknesses. Typically, compression of a sample to half its initial thickness resulted in a decrease in permeability by an order of magnitude. Since the change in GDL thickness during compression can be converted to porosity, the relationship between measured permeability and porosity was compared to various models available in the literature, one of which allows the estimation of anisotropic tortuosity. The effect of inertia on fluid flow was also determined and found to vary inversely with permeability, in agreement with available correlations. The results of this work will be useful for 3D modeling studies where knowledge of permeability and effective diffusivity tensors is required.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e4afeb89bd1add6daaf996191418a0b410bd2cda

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Automotive Engineering

1. Ya-Ling He
2. Michael W. Fowler
3. Chaoyang Wang
4. Christopher D. Rahn
5. Kandler A. Smith

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. P. Sinha
2. Chaoyang Wang
3. J. Gostick
4. Li Chen
5. Michael W. Fowler
6. Ya-Ling He
7. Wen-Quan Tao
8. M. Pritzker

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. P. Sinha
2. J. Gostick
3. Chaoyang Wang
4. M. Pritzker
5. Michael W. Fowler
6. Marios Ioannidis
7. Majid Bahrami
8. Ya-Ling He

Citations in the corpus

• Pore-scale flow and mass transport in gas diffusion layer of proton exchange membrane fuel cell with interdigitated flow fields (2012, background): “Usually, the in-plane permeability is higher than the through-plane permeability [18].”
• Liquid water transport in a mixed-wet gas diffusion layer of a polymer electrolyte fuel cell (2008, background): “Mean pore diameter 20m 16–25 m( Mathias et al., 2003) Thickness 275m 110.370m Porosity 62% 78–80% (without PTFE loading) Absolute permeability (thickness direction) 5.6 D 5–10 D (Mathias et al., 2003) Absolute permeability (in-plane direction) 6 D 5–12 D (Mathias et al., 2003) Anisotropy factor (in-”
• Pore network modeling of fibrous gas diffusion layers for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (2007, background): “Spatial correlation also partially accounts for the observed directional anisotropy in the permeability tensor [21].”
• Analytical determination of viscous permeability of fibrous porous media (2009, background): “The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues.”