Modeling two-phase transport in PEM fuel cell channels

The ability to model and simulate polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) is of paramount importance to the fundamental study and advancement of the technology as well as engineering design and optimization of PEFCs. Despite the great efforts made in the past years, a challenge still remains in the area of developing a suitable sub-model that can simulate two-phase transport in PEFC channels and can be incorporated to a full PEFC fuel cell model. This is mainly due to the lack of efficient numerical methods to track the two-phase interface. The objective of this work is to make one of the first attempts at developing a sub-model of channel flows and couple it with a PEFC model that simulate other phenomena occurring in a PEM fuel cell, including those in the anode side. The boundary conditions at the channel and gas diffusion layer interface are briefly discussed. Comparison is also made between the single-phase channel sub-model and two-phase one, as well as between different model parameters in terms of liquid water saturation distributions.