A Novel Approach to Structure/Property Relations in Inhomogeneous Porous Media with High and Low Porosity

Abstract

In this study, a novel path-percolation algorithm is introduced to simulate inhomogeneous porous channels. Furthermore, a novel double-path-percolation model was developed to simulate porous channels with lower-tortuosity void paths for fluid transfer and solid paths for heat and electron transfer. Micro-computed tomographies of two actual gas diffusion layer materials used in polymer electrolyte fuel cells were digitized and used in diffusion simulations to provide morphology precisely. A single-phase fluid flow through the inhomogeneous porous channels was simulated using a two-dimensional lattice Boltzmann model, where the fluid flow codes were ported on Nvidia GPUs using CUDA. The effective diffusion equations as a function of effective porosity and tortuosity were developed for single- and double-path-percolation models, respectively, and tested using the micro-computed tomographies of the gas diffusion layers.