In-plane and through-plane local and average Nusselt numbers in fibrous porous materials with different fiber layer temperatures: Gas diffusion layers for fuel cells

摘要

Convective heat transfer inside fibrous gas diffusion layers (GDLs) noticeably impacts the heat and water management of air-cooled polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). Cutting-edge experiments have recently proved that convective heat transfer inside fibrous GDLs increases their thermal resistances considerably. However, heat transfer coefficients are difficult to measure experimentally or compute numerically for the millions of the tiny pores inside microstructural GDLs.