Issue 1, 2018

A lung-inspired approach to scalable and robust fuel cell design

Abstract

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 cm−2) 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 (∼5 mV h−1). 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.

Graphical abstract: A lung-inspired approach to scalable and robust fuel cell design

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
31 iyl 2017
Accepted
11 okt 2017
First published
25 okt 2017
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Energy Environ. Sci., 2018,11, 136-143

A lung-inspired approach to scalable and robust fuel cell design

P. Trogadas, J. I. S. Cho, T. P. Neville, J. Marquis, B. Wu, D. J. L. Brett and M.-O. Coppens, Energy Environ. Sci., 2018, 11, 136 DOI: 10.1039/C7EE02161E

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