Three-dimensional two-phase mass transport model for direct methanol fuel cells

2007 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 853-862 ◽  
Author(s):  
W.W. Yang ◽  
T.S. Zhao ◽  
C. Xu
2011 ◽  
Vol 233-235 ◽  
pp. 2615-2618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yue Ping Chen ◽  
Hang Guo ◽  
Fang Ye ◽  
Chong Fang Ma

A three-dimensional, two-phase, multiple-component, unsteady model for the anode side of passive direct methanol fuel cells is presented in this work. The model is formed by a drift-flux model and can capture in-plane distributions of species along different directions in the cell. After grid independency test, this model is used to investigate numerically transport behaviors in the anode of liquid feed direct methanol fuel cells. The results illustrate the feasibility of the passively delivering methanol to the electrochemical reaction site, and characterize the relevant transport phenomena. Moreover, the evolution of species concentration, velocities along different directions in the cell and the mass transfer limitation were also presented. The three-dimensional model is valuable for understanding and predicting mass transfer in passive direct methanol fuel cells.


Author(s):  
Hang Guo ◽  
Chong Fang Ma ◽  
Mao Hai Wang ◽  
Jian Yu ◽  
Xuan Liu ◽  
...  

Fuel cells are related to a number of scientific and engineering disciplines, which include electrochemistry, catalysis, membrane science and engineering, heat and mass transfer, thermodynamics and so on. Several thermophysical phenomena such as heat transfer, multicomponent transport and two phase flow play significant roles in hydrogen proton exchange membrane fuel cells and direct methanol fuel cells based on solid polymer electrolyte membrane. Some coupled thermophysical issues are bottleneck in process of scale-up of direct methanol fuel cells and hydrogen proton exchange membrane fuel cells. In present paper, experimental results of visualization of condensed water in fuel cell cathode microchannels are presented. The equivalent diameter of the rectangular channel is 0.8mm. Water droplets from the order of 0.08mm to 0.8mm were observed from several different locations in the channels. Several important problems, such as generation and change characteristics of water droplet and gas bubble, two phase flow under chemical reaction conditions, mass transfer enhancement of oxygen in the cathode porous media layer, heat transfer enhancement and high efficiency cooling system of proton exchange membrane fuel cells stack, etc., are discussed.


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