Electro-osmotic cell, components

When either an externally applied voltage or a galvanically created voltage is applied to an electro-osmotic cell, a number of potential drops develop within the cell which together constitute the total voltage. A simple extension of Eq. (20) will give the components of the voltage V, as follows ... 

During the fuel cell operation, liquid water flooding can take place at the cathode CL of the fuel cell when the removal rate of water is lower than the rate of water produced by ORR and transported from anode to cathode by electro-osmotic drag. In this case, the pores of the CL are occupied by the liquid water, which limits the oxygen transport to the active sites of the CL and results in a lower fuel cell performance. Thus, introducing a hydrophobic component to the CL is also very important to create more channels or pores for the gas and liquid water transport. To optimize the composition of the CL, an optimal ratio of Cata-lyst lonomer Teflon was found to be 1 0.875 0.875 for high fuelcell performance. ... 

In a fuel cell, feed gas consmnption can affect the hydrodjmamics of channel flow. For example, in PEFCs hydrogen atoms are consmned in the anode channel and appear in the cathode channel as a component of the water molecules. The electro-osmotic effect causes the transfer of water from the anode chaimel to the cathode channel. Due to these fluxes the mass of the flow changes, which may affect flow density and velocity. 

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