A Multiscale Method for Multiphase Pore-Scale Simulation of the Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell Catalyst Layer

Abstract

Understanding the multiphysics inside the catalyst layer of polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) is critical to design of optimized catalyst layer porous structure. Pore-scale simulation directly computes detailed multiphysics phenomena occurring inside the heterogeneous structure, which is therefore a promising tool in improving the understanding. However, for the wide-spread use of pore-scale simulation, its computational cost needs to be further reduced. In this work, the multiscale method is applied to multiphase pore-scale simulation of the cathode catalyst layer. Simulation results show that the computational cost of multiphase pore-scale simulation is substantially decreased by the multiscale method without sacrificing the accuracy.