Polymer electrolyte fuel cell modeling - A comparison of two models with different levels of complexity

Zhang, S.; Beale, Steven; Reimer, Uwe; Andersson, Martin; Lehnert, Werner

doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2020.05.060

Cited by 19 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 78 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…(2) The volumetric reactions taking place in the catalyst layer (CL) are replaced by simplified boundary conditions; the electric field calculation is performed therefore in only two dimensions [60].…”

Section: Numerical Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Open-source Computational Model for Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Open-source fuel cell models outmatch commercial codes in many important aspects. By providing the source code, reuse, modification and extension of the model and comparison with other codes becomes possible. With this motivation, we present a three-dimensional, steady-state, non-isothermal proton exchange membrane fuel cell model, implemented in the open-source finite volume library OpenFOAM® . At every stage of implementation, special care was taken to ensure a well documented, organised, and modular structure of the software. The resulting model suite can, and should, be extended with new sub-modules by the user. The main field of application, modelling of fuel cells from an engineering perspective, is demonstrated by simulating two different conventional polymer electrolyte fuel cells, operated at CIEMAT and Forschungszentrum Jülich, respectively.

show abstract

Section: Numerical Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Open-source Computational Model for Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…S current = i v in electrochemical active regions 0 in electrochemical inactive regions (13) and i v is given in Equation (2) and Equation (3).…”

Section: Of 23mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this work, the authors employed a computational code, openFuelCell2 [9,10], which has been implemented with an open-source library, OpenFOAM [11]. The code has witnessed a reliable performance in low temperature electrochemical applications, for example, the proton exchange membrane fuel cells [12][13][14][15]. This work aims to extends the capability of openFuelCell2 to high temperature applications, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Modelling and Simulation of the Solid Oxide Cell Stacks and Metal Interconnect Oxidation With OpenFOAM

Yu¹,

Zhang²,

Schäfer³

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Solid oxide cells are capable of efficiently converting various chemical energy carriers to electricity and vice versa. The urgent challenge nowadays is the faster degradation rate compared with other fuel cell/electrolyzer technologies. To understand the degradation mechanisms, simulation of a solid oxide cell is helpful. Since most previous research developed models using commercial software, such as COMSOL and ANSYS Fluent, a gap for knowledge transfer is being gradually formed between academia and industry due to licensing issues. This paper introduces a multiphysics model, developed by a computational code, openFuelCell2. The code is implemented with an open-source library, OpenFOAM. It accounts for momentum transfer, mass transfer, electrochemical reactions and metal interconnect oxidation. The model can precisely predict I-V curves under different temperatures, fuel humidity and operation modes. Comparison between OpenFOAM and COMSOL simulations shows good agreement. The metal interconnect oxidation is modelled, which can predict the thickness of the oxide scale under different protective coatings. Simulations are conducted by assuming an ultra-thin film resistance on the rib surface. It is revealed that coatings fabricated by atmospheric plasma spraying can efficiently prevent metal interconnect oxidation, with a contribution of only 0.53 \% to the total degradation rate.

show abstract

“…16,17 The cell performance can be analyzed and predicted by numerical methods, which have been discussed extensively in the literature. Although many 3-dimensional, non-isothermal, multi-phase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models have been reported, 18,19 most of the models are complicated with heavy computation load, and difficult to separate the effects of fluid dynamic, heat transfer, proton/electron transfer and electrochemical phenomenon. The computationally inexpensive method to summarize and understand the distributions of properties in the cell is lack of reporting.…”

Section: List Of Symbolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Gas Macromixing in Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell

Kageyama

Kawase

2023

J. Electrochem. Soc.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

For PEFCs’ grand-scale commercialization, their performance should be further improved. The performance of PEFCs is the result of the distributions of local current density and materials concentration, especially oxygen and water. In addition, the in-plane transport of reactant gas in the gas diffusion layer, which is difficult to measure, affects the distribution of oxygen partial pressure and relative humidity by mixing the gas with different residence time. In this study, the PEFC was regarded as a reactor, the gas macromixing in which was evaluated by residence time distribution in the perspective of chemical engineering. The cell performance with different active area and gas flow rate in parallel and serpentine gas channels was measured experimentally and predicted by the compartment models. According to the model, the gas macromixing in the 1-mm-manifold parallel channel is more obvious than that in the serpentine model, and has better performance at low oxygen conversion, since appropriate water humidification is beneficial to the cell performance. The results also indicate that the gas macromixing should be promoted to improve the water humidification and the cell performance at low oxygen conversion. The computationally inexpensive compartment model is potentially applicable for system simulator and design procedure.

show abstract

Polymer electrolyte fuel cell modeling - A comparison of two models with different levels of complexity

Cited by 19 publications

References 78 publications

Open-source Computational Model for Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells

Open-source Computational Model for Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells

Numerical Modelling and Simulation of the Solid Oxide Cell Stacks and Metal Interconnect Oxidation With OpenFOAM

Effects of Gas Macromixing in Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About