Stochastic Generation of Sintered Titanium Powder-Based Porous Transport Layers in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Electrolyzers and Investigation of Structural Properties

摘要

The stochastic modeling of sintered titanium powder-based porous transport layers in polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyzers using information gathered from microscale computed tomography (μ-CT) is proposed. The stochastic reconstructions were compared to the μ-CT reconstruction in terms of surface morphology and structural properties. Seeding parameter and filling radius were found to be the key parameters in this stochastic model. Parametric studies on the stochastic parameters were conducted, comparing pore and throat size distributions, mean pore and throat sizes, and numbers of pores and throats, with the μ-CT reconstruction. Increasing the seeding parameter led to increases in the number of pores and throats while decreasing mean pore and throat sizes. Increasing the filling radius led to decreases in number of pores and throats but increases in the mean pore and throat sizes. With appropriate seeding and filling parameters, the structural properties of the stochastic reconstruction closely matched the μ-CT reconstruction.