Abstract
The oxygen transport on the cathode side of polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) is an important factor that determines their performance. This study presents a fiber-optic gas sensing technique for monitoring the oxygen concentration in flow channels of operating PEFCs based on transmission tunable diode absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS). As the first stage, the fiber-optic transmission TDLAS system was developed and applied to the ex-situ measurement of oxygen concentration in the narrow channels of a simulated flow cell. It was found that the second-harmonic (2f) absorption spectra of oxygen can be clearly detected without optical noises even though the channel width is narrowed to 1.0 mm. The calibration results obtained from the TDLAS measurements enable to accurately estimate the oxygen mole fraction within the flow cell. The fiber-optic transmission TDLAS is applicable for the oxygen monitoring in submillimeter-scale channels of actual PEFCs.
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