Predictions of Effective Transport Coefficients for Porous Electrode in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell

In this study, the micro structures of gas diffusion layer (GDL) and micro porous layer (MPL) of a fuel cell were reconstructed according to the real physical structures, then a 3-D lattice Boltzmann model was established to predict the effective transport coefficients of GDL and MPL. The results were fitted an equation of effective transport coefficient for MPL and compared with the empirical equations that are widely used in the macro models. The results show that the predicted results of Bruggeman equation are higher than the results based on the real micro structures of porous electrodes. The permeability of MPL is 1~2 orders of magnitude lower than that of GDL, and due to the low porosity of MPL, the variation range of permeability is also smaller than that of GDL.