Development of a Full Layer Pore-Scale Model for the Simulation of Electro-Active Material Used in Power Sources

A general pore-scale model was developed which mimics the electro-active layer formation process. The model was used to simulate the active material loading on batery, fuel cell and supercapacitor electrodes. The active layer was reconstructed by the deposition of 108 particles and by varying the interaction between particles. Instead of simulating each generated layers at macro scale, the renormalization group theory was applied to reduce the complexity of the system. It was shown, that the generated layers belong to the same universality class and can be normalized by a self-affine transformation. The non-linear scaling function, obtained at micro-scale, was incorporated into the macrohomogenious model to simulate the impact of ultra-low Pt loading on specific activity of fuel cells and of thickness of supercapacitors layers on volumetric capacitance. The analysis of experimental data and modeling results revealed that specific activity and volumetric capacitance increase at ultra-low loading, because the surface area in unit volume is not independent of the loading or the thickness. Finally a general relationship was given, which describes the evolution of volumetric surface area density of fuel cells, batteries and supercapacitor with loading, and can be used to build a bridge between microscale morphology and macroscopic simulation.

KRISTON Akos;  PFRANG Andreas;  POPOV B.N.;  BRETT Lois; 

2014-06-04

ELECTROCHEMICAL SOC INC

JRC88512

0013-4651,   

http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/161/8/E3235.abstract,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC88512,   

10.1149/2.028408jes,