Improved Methods for Simultaneous Neutron and X-Ray Tomography of Operating Fuel Cells

Abstract

Neutrons and X-rays provide complementary, non-destructive information on the operating conditions inside fuel cells. As previously reported, NIST has developed a fuel cell to facilitate simultaneous, multimodal tomography on the Neutron and X-ray Tomography (NeXT) system at the NIST Center for Neutron Research. The original cell design served as a developmental testbed but suffered several drawbacks such as CT artifacts caused by cell design and scan parameter choices and long, 18 hour tomography scans where the cell would need to operate at steady-state. Multiple improvements to the NeXT system and the tomography reconstruction workflow has resulted in a reduction of scan times down to as low as 4 hours with a reduction in CT artifacts. The improvements to reconstruction quality and the development of registration and segmentation tools that work on the multimodal datasets allows for the tracking of the gas diffusion layer – catalyst layer interfaces. This will improve the conversion of measured water thickness to saturation as local compression effects and MEA waviness can be accounted for. A new cell design to further reduce reconstruction artifacts and a new method for hybrid high resolution radiography and tomography will be discussed.