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Degree

MS, University of Cincinnati, Engineering and Applied Science: Mechanical Engineering, 2010.

Abstract

The fluid flow through porous media requires understanding the behavior of the capillary properties and pore-size characteristics of the porous medium. The similarity experiment is conducted to study the capillary pressure and saturation relationship using the continuous liquid intrusion and liquid drainage in the Glass bead porous medium and the capillary behavior is compared to the Gas diffusion layer porous medium used in Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell. While the liquid-air capillary pressure curves in the glass bead porous medium are found to depend on the glass bead diameter, surface wettability and pore-size characteristics, they depend on the GDL sample thickness and Teflon content in the GDL.

The main objective is to understand the capillary behavior in the porous medium by controlling the surface wettability, pore-size characteristics and glass bead diameter of the porous medium. A capillary pressure – liquid saturation relation is derived based on the experimental data at room temperature and the relative permeability – saturation correlation for the gas diffusion layers under the given conditions was obtained using the Wyllie model. Finally the empirical fit of the capillary pressure-saturation correlations is validated for the GDL porous media and the optimum conditions for the fuel cell operation is evaluated for the efficient fuel cell operation.

Subject Headings

Mechanical engineering

Keywords

Glass bead; Capillary pressure; Capillary; porous; TORAY; Glass bead porous; bead

Committee / Advisors

Sang Young Son, PhD (Committee Chair)
Rupak Banerjee, PhD, PE (Committee Member)
Michael Kazmierczak, PhD (Committee Member)

Pages

111p.

Document number: ucin1281450979
Permalink: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1281450979

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