Manufacturing of High-Temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membranes—Part II: Implementation and System Model Validation

In this paper, a complex system of theoretical models, which predicts flow rate as a function of pressure drop, formulated previously by Harris et al. (2007, “Manufacturing of High-Temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membranes—Part I: System Design and Modeling,” ASME J. Fuel Cell Sci. Technol., 7, p. 011007), are validated through a case study. Specifically, the flow behavior of a power law polymer electrolyte membrane solution, as it flows through a novel manufacturing system, is investigated. It is found that a strategic design methodology can be used to develop a complete manufacturing system to fabricate a defect free film. Moreover, the casting method offers significant improvements for the thickness uniformity of the membrane film, compared with film that is fabricated using scaled laboratory processes. The pressure losses predicted throughout the system are validated accordingly, not only from experimental results but also from computational fluid dynamics modeling.