JOURNAL OF THE ELECTROCHEMICAL SOCIETY ELECTROCHEMICAL SC IENCE The Effect of Liquid Configuration in Porous Gas Electrodes

The influence of differential pressure on electrode activity was measured for oxygen cathodes made up of beds of uniform silver spheres (156 ~m diam-eter). The extent and nature of this dependence could be explained through use of the concept of pendular and funicular liquid configuration in the pore space of the electrode. The per formance of a porous gas electrode is de-pendent not only on its pore structure but also on the conf igurat ion of the gas-liquid interfaces within the pores. Thus the differential pressure stablished across an electrode has been found by many investigations to be an important influence (1-7). Explanations pre-sented for differential pressure ffects have been based almost ent i re ly on the distribution between gas and liquid filled pores that is found in electrodes wit