Simulation of Effects of Nation Loading in Catalyst Layer on Performance of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells

摘要

The present study is concerned with the influence of Nafion loading in the catalyst layers on the behavior of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). Numerical simulation is performed to predict the Nafion loading effects. Meanwhile, change in the performance of the PEMFC accompanying the variations of geometric parameters is also investigated. In this study, a self-developed code, which is used to deal with the volume fractions of Nafion loaded, solid catalyst particles, and void space inside the catalyst layers, is incorporated with a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics code, which is capable of dealing with the three-dimensional mass, momentum, and species transport phenomena as well as the electron-transfer process taking place in the PEMFC. Part of the numerical results is compared with the experiments, and a close agreement between the predictions and the experiments has been found.