In this section
@article{Trogadas:2017:10.1039/C7EE02161E,
author = {Trogadas, P and Cho, JIS and Neville, TP and Marquis, J and Wu, B and Brett, DJL and Coppens, MO},
doi = {10.1039/C7EE02161E},
journal = {Energy and Environmental Science},
pages = {136--143},
title = {A lung-inspired approach to scalable and robust fuel cell design},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C7EE02161E},
volume = {11},
year = {2017}
}
TY - JOUR
AB - A lung-inspired approach is employed to overcome reactant homogeneity issues in polymer electrolyte fuel cells. The fractal geometry of the lung is used as the model to design flow-fields of different branching generations, resulting in uniform reactant distribution across the electrodes and minimum entropy production of the whole system. 3D printed, lung-inspired flow field based PEFCs with N = 4 generations outperform the conventional serpentine flow field designs at 50% and 75% RH, exhibiting a 20% and 30% increase in performance (at current densities higher than 0.8 A cm2) and maximum power density, respectively. In terms of pressure drop, fractal flow-fields with N = 3 and 4 generations demonstrate 75% and 50% lower values than conventional serpentine flow-field design for all RH tested, reducing the power requirements for pressurization and recirculation of the reactants. The positive effect of uniform reactant distribution is pronounced under extended current-hold measurements, where lung-inspired flow field based PEFCs with N = 4 generations exhibit the lowest voltage decay (B5 mV h1). The enhanced fuel cell performance and low pressure drop values of fractal flow field design are preserved at large scale(25 cm2), in which the excessive pressure drop of a large-scale serpentine flow field renders its use prohibitive.
AU - Trogadas,P
AU - Cho,JIS
AU - Neville,TP
AU - Marquis,J
AU - Wu,B
AU - Brett,DJL
AU - Coppens,MO
DO - 10.1039/C7EE02161E
EP - 143
PY - 2017///
SN - 1754-5692
SP - 136
TI - A lung-inspired approach to scalable and robust fuel cell design
T2 - Energy and Environmental Science
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C7EE02161E
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/52422
VL - 11
ER -