Simulation-Assisted Determination of the Start-Up Time of a Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell

Bodner, Merit; Penga, Željko; Ladreiter, Walter; Heidinger, Mathias; Hacker, Viktor

doi:10.3390/en14237929

Open AccessArticle

Simulation-Assisted Determination of the Start-Up Time of a Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell

by

Merit Bodner

^1,*

,

Željko Penga

^2,*

,

Walter Ladreiter

¹,

Mathias Heidinger

¹ and

Viktor Hacker

¹

Institute of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Technology, Graz University of Technology, Inffeldgasse 25C, 8010 Graz, Austria

²

Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Split, R. Boškovića 32, 21000 Split, Croatia

^*

Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Energies 2021, 14(23), 7929; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14237929

Submission received: 28 October 2021 / Revised: 17 November 2021 / Accepted: 18 November 2021 / Published: 26 November 2021

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development of Advanced Models for Analysis and Simulation of Fuel Cells)

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Abstract

Fuel starvation is a major cause of anode corrosion in low temperature polymer electrolyte fuel cells. The fuel cell start-up is a critical step, as hydrogen may not yet be evenly distributed in the active area, leading to local starvation. The present work investigates the hydrogen distribution and risk for starvation during start-up and after nitrogen purge by extending an existing computational fluid dynamic model to capture transient behavior. The results of the numerical model are compared with detailed experimental analysis on a 25 cm² triple serpentine flow field with good agreement in all aspects and a required time step size of 1 s. This is two to three orders of magnitude larger than the time steps used by other works, resulting in reasonably quick calculation times (e.g., 3 min calculation time for 1 s of experimental testing time using a 2 million element mesh).

Keywords: fuel cell start-up; transient CFD simulation; fuel cell degradation

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MDPI and ACS Style

Bodner, M.; Penga, Ž.; Ladreiter, W.; Heidinger, M.; Hacker, V. Simulation-Assisted Determination of the Start-Up Time of a Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell. Energies 2021, 14, 7929. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14237929

AMA Style

Bodner M, Penga Ž, Ladreiter W, Heidinger M, Hacker V. Simulation-Assisted Determination of the Start-Up Time of a Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell. Energies. 2021; 14(23):7929. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14237929

Chicago/Turabian Style

Bodner, Merit, Željko Penga, Walter Ladreiter, Mathias Heidinger, and Viktor Hacker. 2021. "Simulation-Assisted Determination of the Start-Up Time of a Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell" Energies 14, no. 23: 7929. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14237929

APA Style

Bodner, M., Penga, Ž., Ladreiter, W., Heidinger, M., & Hacker, V. (2021). Simulation-Assisted Determination of the Start-Up Time of a Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell. Energies, 14(23), 7929. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14237929

Note that from the first issue of 2016, this journal uses article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.

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Simulation-Assisted Determination of the Start-Up Time of a Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell

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