In Situ Polymerized Wicks for Passive Water Management and Humidification of Dry Gases

Abstract

We develop a passive water management system that employs in-situ polymerized wick structures that can be integrated with state-of-the-art flow field designs (e.g., stamped metal or injection molded). We develop a simple model to examine the feasibility of using a pre-humidifier to evaporate fuel cell product water into the cathode inlet dry-gas stream. We then demonstrate the effectiveness of this idea in a custom-fabricated integrated wick system. We also experimentally study the performance of our novel wick design for flood mitigation in a parallel flow field using fully humidified gases.