Characterization of Commercial Gas Diffusion Layers (GDL) by Liquid Extrusion Porometry (LEP) and Gas Liquid Displacement Porometry (GLDP)

This works aims to study the porous characterization of several commercial Gas Diffusion Layers (GDL). Three carbon-based porous GDL featuring a highly rigid microstructure of interconnected pores of several manufacturers were analyzed. Gas Liquid Displacement Porometry (GLDP) and Liquid Extrusion P...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: René I. Peinador, Oumaima Abba, José I. Calvo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022-02-01
Series:Membranes
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0375/12/2/212
Description
Summary:This works aims to study the porous characterization of several commercial Gas Diffusion Layers (GDL). Three carbon-based porous GDL featuring a highly rigid microstructure of interconnected pores of several manufacturers were analyzed. Gas Liquid Displacement Porometry (GLDP) and Liquid Extrusion Porometry (LEP) have been used to obtain their pore size distributions (PSD) and the mean and mode pore diameters (<i>d<sub>avg</sub></i> and <i>d<sub>mod</sub></i>), by means of a gas/liquid and extrusion porometer developed at IFTS. N-dodecane liquid has been used to completely wet the GDL’s assuring penetration of the liquid into the carbon fibrous structure. The results demonstrated the accuracy of the setup on characterizing GDL in the Particle Filtration (PF) range by GLDP and LEP, with reasonable agreements of resulting PSD and average sizes between both techniques when GLDP and LEP results are compared. Differences can be explained in terms of the high pore connectivity of these kinds of structures.
ISSN:2077-0375