TY - JOUR
T1 - Effect of porous structure of catalyst layer on effective oxygen diffusion coefficient in polymer electrolyte fuel cell
AU - Inoue, Gen
AU - Kawase, Motoaki
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was partially supported by New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), Japan.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier B.V.
Copyright:
Copyright 2016 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2016/9/30
Y1 - 2016/9/30
N2 - It is important to reduce the oxygen diffusion resistance through PEFC porous electrode, because it is the key to reduce the PEFC cost. However, the gas diffusion coefficient of CL is lower than MPL in spite of framework consisted of same carbon blacks. In this study, in order to understand the reasons of the lower gas diffusion performance of CL, the relationship between a carbon black agglomerate structure and ionomer adhesion condition is evaluated by a numerical analysis with an actual reconstructed structure and a simulated structure. As a result, the gas diffusion property of CL strongly depends on the ionomer adhesion shape. In the case of adhesion shape with the same curvature of ionomer interface, each pore can not be connected enough. So the pore tortuosity increases. Moreover, in the case of existence of inefficient large pores formed by carbon black agglomerate and ununiformly coated ionomer, the gas diffusion performance decrease rapidly. As the measurement values in actual CL are almost equal to that with model structure with inefficient large pores. These characteristics can be confirmed by actual cross-section image obtained by FIB-SEM.
AB - It is important to reduce the oxygen diffusion resistance through PEFC porous electrode, because it is the key to reduce the PEFC cost. However, the gas diffusion coefficient of CL is lower than MPL in spite of framework consisted of same carbon blacks. In this study, in order to understand the reasons of the lower gas diffusion performance of CL, the relationship between a carbon black agglomerate structure and ionomer adhesion condition is evaluated by a numerical analysis with an actual reconstructed structure and a simulated structure. As a result, the gas diffusion property of CL strongly depends on the ionomer adhesion shape. In the case of adhesion shape with the same curvature of ionomer interface, each pore can not be connected enough. So the pore tortuosity increases. Moreover, in the case of existence of inefficient large pores formed by carbon black agglomerate and ununiformly coated ionomer, the gas diffusion performance decrease rapidly. As the measurement values in actual CL are almost equal to that with model structure with inefficient large pores. These characteristics can be confirmed by actual cross-section image obtained by FIB-SEM.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jpowsour.2016.07.037
DO - 10.1016/j.jpowsour.2016.07.037
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84978203796
VL - 327
SP - 1
EP - 10
JO - Journal of Power Sources
JF - Journal of Power Sources
SN - 0378-7753
ER -