Numerical Predicting of Liquid Water Transport inside Gas Diffusion Layer for PEMFC Using Lattice Boltzmann Method

The purpose of this work is to use the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) a numerical simulation technique to understand the two-phase transport of liquid water and air inside the gas diffusion layers (GDLs) used in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC). The major focus of this work is the local saturation of liquid water under breakthrough dynamics across the GDLs with and without a microporous layer (MPL). The model geometries of GDLs and MPLs used in this study were obtained by three dimensional reconstructed micro-structure from Micro X-ray computed tomography (CT). The overall predictions of water breakthrough pressure agree with the data observed in the experiments. They also reveal that the breakthrough pressure and liquid water evolution inside the GDL samples are different when the wetting properties of GDL and/or MPL are changed.