Journal
TRANSPORT IN POROUS MEDIA
Volume 128, Issue 2, Pages 363-384Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s11242-019-01252-8
Keywords
Catalytic porous media; Reaction-diffusion; Multiscale; Effective properties; Polymer electrolyte fuel cells
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Funding
- NSF CAREER award [1652445]
- DOE Office of Science [DE-AC02-06CH11357]
- MINECO/FEDER, UE [ENE2015-68703-C2-1-R]
- research grant 'Ayudas a la Investigacion en Energia y Medio Ambiente' of the Spanish Iberdrola Foundation
- US-Spain Fulbright Commission
- Div Of Chem, Bioeng, Env, & Transp Sys
- Directorate For Engineering [1652445] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Reaction-diffusion processes in multiscale catalytic porous media are found in a wide range of scientific areas as, for example, electrochemical energy conversion and storage devices, geological systems and bioengineering. The dependency of effective transport properties on reaction rate has been long debated in the literature, and traditionally ignored in emerging fields, such as polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs). In this work, a 1D upscaling method is presented to evaluate the effective properties (effective diffusivity and catalyst utilization) of PEFC catalyst layers featuring first-order kinetics. Unlike Whitaker's closure method, the present algorithm is easy to implement and well suited for porous media with arbitrarily complex 3D geometries. The numerical results show that the normalized effective diffusivity and catalyst utilization are not passive geometrical properties but are influenced by the reaction-diffusion coupling when the Thiele modulus is higher than 1. This effect can be important at high current densities in the cathode catalyst layer of state-of-the-art PEFCs.
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