Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
1292150 | Journal of Power Sources | 2007 | 12 Pages |
Numerical simulations are performed to investigate the effect on PEM fuel cell performance of Nafion loading in the catalyst layer. The investigation also considers variations of geometric parameters. A model that accounts for the volume fractions of Nafion, the solid catalyst particles, and the void space inside the catalyst layers is incorporated into a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics code, capable of resolving three-dimensional mass, momentum, and species transport phenomena as well as the electron- and proton-transfer processes in a PEMFC. Numerical results are first compared with experiments, showing close agreement between predictions and measurements. A parametric study on the effects of Nafion loading and geometric parameters variation is carried out to evaluate the performance of PEMFC for various parameter combinations.