Microstructure Reconstruction and Gas-Liquid Two-Phase Transport Mechanism within Porous Electrodes of PEM Fuel Cells

Abstract

The structure of porous media is composed of skeleton particles and pores. Its micro-pores and solid skeleton characteristics lead to the capillary fingering movement of fluid in its porous media driven by capillary pressure. Currently, the methods of constructing porous media are mainly random construction and multi-scale imaging construction. The porous structure constructed by these two methods can show the real microstructure characteristics. The research on multiphase flow in microporous structure mainly includes VOF, MC, LBM, and other methods. In this chapter, taking the classic porous structure of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell gas diffusion layer (GDL) as an example, GDL porous microstructure is constructed through random algorithm, and multiphase LBM is used to study two-phase flow in porous media to explore the relationship between porous structure characteristics and multiphase flow transport.