Lee ChungHyuk, Lee Jason K, George Michael G, Fahy Kieran F, LaManna Jacob M, Baltic Elias, Hussey Daniel S, Jacobson David L, Bazylak Aimy
Thermofluids for Energy and Advanced Materials (TEAM) Laboratory Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto Institute for Sustainable Energy Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto Ontario, Canada M5S 3G8.
Physical Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA.
Energy Convers Manag. 2020 Jun;213. doi: 10.1016/j.enconman.2020.112797.
In this work, we investigated the impact of temperature on two-phase transport in low temperature (LT)-polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyzer anode flow channels via neutron imaging and observed a decrease in mass transport overpotential with increasing temperature. We observed an increase in anode oxygen gas content with increasing temperature, which was counter-intu.itive to the trends in mass transport overpotential. We attributed this counterintuitive decrease in mass transport overpotential to the enhanced reactant distribution in the flow channels as a result of the temperature increase, determined via a one-dimensional analytical model. We further determined that gas accumulation and fluid property changes are competing, temperature-dependent contributors to mass transport overpotential; however, liquid water viscosity changes led to the dominate enhancement of reactant water distributions in the anode. We present this temperature-dependent mass transport overpotential as a great opportunity for further increasing the voltage efficiency of PEM electrolyzers.
在这项工作中，我们通过中子成像研究了温度对低温（LT）-聚合物电解质膜（PEM）电解槽阳极流道中两相传输的影响，并观察到随着温度升高，传质过电位降低。我们观察到随着温度升高，阳极氧气含量增加，这与传质过电位的趋势相反。我们将传质过电位这种违反直觉的降低归因于温度升高导致流道中反应物分布增强，这是通过一维分析模型确定的。我们进一步确定，气体积聚和流体性质变化是影响传质过电位的相互竞争的、与温度相关的因素；然而，液态水粘度变化导致阳极中反应物水分布的主要增强。我们认为这种与温度相关的传质过电位是进一步提高PEM电解槽电压效率的一个绝佳机会。
