Effective Transport Properties for Fuel Cells: Modeling and Experimental Characterization

Polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) are key elements in governments' plans to create a future hydrogen economy, providing clean, affordable electrical power for vehicles and portable electronic devices, among other applications. However, excessive cost and limited performance and durability still limit PEFC commercialization. At this stage of technological development, reducing Pt loading while improving performance and durability requires a tailored design of effective properties (e.g., thermal conductivity and diffusivity) and electrochemical activity (e.g., electrochemical surface area) of porous transport layers. Multifunctional thin, porous layers must be optimized by a combination of modeling and experimental work at different scales, ranging from a single layer up to cell (and stack) level(s). Even though this challenging task has already motivated a large body of work, further research on effective properties through the multiscale pore structure of PEFCs is needed to meet PEFC targets in the coming years.