Thermal Conductivity Measurements of Gas Diffusion Layer Under Controlled Temperature, Humidity and Stress

In this work, thermal conductivities of gas diffusion layer (GDL) under controlled temperature, humidity and stress are measured. Additionally, we investigated the anisotropic thermal conductivity of GDLs. The experimental results showed that thermal conductivity of in-plane direction was much higher than that of trough-plane direction for all the samples that were measured. This result indicated thermal conductivity of GDLs to be strongly anisotropic since GDL is a highly porous material which contains large amount of air inside the GDL. Moreover, we found that thermal conductivity of GDL in the through-plane direction increased as the compression on the GDL was increased.