Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

With shortage of crude oil and global warming, energy is a central issue facing the world today. Fuel cells have emerged as a promising clean-energy technology that may contribute to resolving the looming energy crisis. A hydrogen fuel cell reacts hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity. The obvious benefit is zero harmful emission, the only product being water. When used in automobiles and household appliances, fuel cells are quiet and exceptionally clean, and avoid most of the environmental pollution from burning fossil fuels. Fuel cell technology has found some niche applications already, but large-scale commercialization is still hampered by high cost, poor durability and performance. A key factor that limits the power output is the management of vapor and liquid water in fuel cells. Too little water causes membrane dry-out and loss of conductivity while too much floods the reaction sites and inhibits the chemical reaction. But water transport through the porous layers of the fuel cell is a very complex problem, involving the simultaneous flow of gases and water through irregular micron-size pores. Without a clear grasp of the underlying physics, fuel cell design, especially design of the "gas-diffusion media", has largely been an empirical art up to now. The proposed work seeks a fundamental solution to the above problems through two complementary stages of modeling and design optimization. In the scientifically-oriented stage one, we use computer simulations to faithfully represent water and gas transport at the microscopic pore scale. This knowledge is then used in stage two to design "smart gas-diffusion media" with drastically improved transport properties, which will produce superior power output for the fuel cell. This project will not only advance our scientific knowledge of gas-liquid transport, but help accelerate commercialization of fuel cell technology and further strengthen Canada's leadership in the area of clean energy.