Abstract
Transport phenomena of reactant and product are directly linked to intrinsic inhomogeneous random configurations of catalyst layer (CL) that consist of ionomer, carbon-supported catalyst (Pt/C), and pores. Hence, electrochemically active surface area (ECSA) of Pt/C is dominated by geometrical morphology of mass transport path. Undoubtedly these ECSAs are key factor of total fuel cell efficiency. In this study, non-deterministic micro-scale CLs were randomly generated by Monte Carlo method and implemented with the percolation process. To ensure valid inference about Pt/C catalyst utilization, 600 samples were chosen as the number of necessary samples with 95% confidence level. Statistic results of 600 samples generated under particular condition (20vol% Pt/C, 30vol% ionomer, 50vol% pore, and 20nm particle diameter) reveal only 18.2%~81.0% of Pt/C can construct ECSAs with mean value of 53.8%. This study indicates that the catalyst utilization in fuel cell CLs cannot be identical notwithstanding the same design condition.
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