Dynamic behaviour of liquid water emerging from a GDL pore into a PEMFC gas flow channel

A numerical investigation of the dynamic behaviour of liquid water entering a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) channel through a GDL pore is reported. Two-dimensional, transient simulations employing the volume of fluid (VOF) method are performed to explicitly track the liquid-gas interface, and to gain understanding into the dynamics of a water droplet subjected to air flow in the bulk of the gas channel. The modeled domain consists of a straight channel with air flowing from one side and water entering the domain from a pore at the bottom wall of the channel. The channel dimensions, flow conditions and surface properties are chosen to be representative of typical conditions in a PEMFC. A series of parametric studies, including the effects of channel size, pore size, and the coalescence of droplets are performed with a particular focus on the effect of geometrical structure. The simulation results and analysis of the time evolution of flow patterns show that the height of the channel as well as the width of the pore have significant impacts on the deformation and detachment of the water droplet. Simulations performed for droplets emerging from two pores with the same size into the channel show that coalescence of two water droplets can accelerate the deformation rate and motion of the droplets in the microchannel. Accounting for the initial connection of a droplet to a pore was found to yield critical air inlet velocities for droplet detachment that are significantly different from previous studies that considered an initially stagnant droplet sitting on the surface. The predicted critical air velocity is found to be sensitive to the geometry of the pore, with higher values obtained when the curvature associated with the GDL fibres is taken into account. The critical velocity is also found to decrease with increasing droplet size and decreasing GDL pore diameter. (C) 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V.