Energy and Power Science Forum
The "Excellent Power Engineering" Academic Lectures Series to celebrate the 80th Anniversary of College of Power Engineering: No. 2
Academic talk by Prof. Ned Djilali, a Fellow of both the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society of Canada
November 6, 2017, Room #504 at the main teaching building, the College of Power Engineering invited Prof. Ned Djilali from University of Victoria to give an academic talk, titled by “Modelling and Simulation of Transport Phenomena in Fuel Cell Electrodes”. Prof. Ned Djilali is a Fellow of both the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society of Canada, and a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Victoria, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Advanced Energy Systems Design and Computational Modelling. His research focuses on transport phenomena (fluid flow, heat, mass and charge transport) and energy systems analysis.
This invited talk was part of the “Excellent Power Engineering” Academic Lectures Series to celebrate the 80th Anniversary of College of Power Engineering. Over 150 graduate students and young faculties from College of Power Engineering and other research institutes attended this lecture.
At the beginning, Professor Xun Zhu introduced Prof. Ned Djilali and expressed warm welcome and thanks to Prof. Djilali.
This talk covered several crucial transport phenomena in the catalyst layers of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC), including three-dimensional (3D) characterization and numerical reconstruction of the porous catalyst layer, and the two-phase transport of liquid water in the catalyst layer and microporous layer.
In this talk, Prof. Djiiali introduced the technology to characterize and reconstruct the porous catalyst layer using a dual-beam FIB-SEM facility. Based on the obtained fine micro-structure, an in-house Multiple-Relaxation-Time Lattice Boltzmann Method (MRT-LBM) was used to investigate the two-phase transport of liquid water in porous catalyst and microporous layers, and the effect on the effective diffusion coefficient of oxygen. In addition, Prof. Djilali also briefly introduced the ongoing work on simulating the preparation of catalyst ink.
Professor Djilali's academic talk was very informative and insightful. The audience got an understanding about the effect of porous microstructure on PEMFC performance. In his talk, Prof. Djilali also took himself as an example to encourage graduate students and young faculties to explore the scientific frontier and unknowns.
At the end, Prof. Qiang Liao, the dean of College of Power Engineering awarded Prof. Djilali an honorary certificate as the University's sincere thanks to Prof. Djilali for his visit and academic talk.
Authors: Jin-ling Wen, Li Jiang Photographer: Xun Song
