Abstract
If the flow channel in the PEFC separator is plugged with the liquid product water, pressure loss increases and the flow is destabilized to cause serious deterioration of the power generation performance. It may be probable that occurrence of the channel plugging can be avoided if the surface wettability of the channel wall is circumferentially non-uniform. In this work, systematic pressure drop measurements were carried out for the gas-liquid two-phase flow in small rectangular channels of various wettability distributions. It was found that the fluctuation of pressure loss that is frequently encountered in uniform wettability channels can dramatically be mitigated by the use of the flow channel of circumferentially non-uniform wettability.
