Analysis and Optimization of Pem Fuel Cells Using Openfoam

Abstract

In a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), the catalyst layer (CL) and the gas diffusion layer (GDL) are made of porous materials, the characteristics of which affect its performance. The CL determines the ion exchange across the membrane that allows the fuel cell reaction to occur. The GDL transfers the reactant towards the CL and electrons through the solid part, and is important for water management and heat removal. Innovative designs of the porosity distribution in the GDL and CL on both the anode and cathode side, is one of the active research topics in PEMFCs. The optimization presented in this paper redesigns the porosity distribution in the GDL and CL in order to increase the current density and reduce hydrogen consumption. To simulate the PEMFCs, a solver is built in the OpenFOAM environment. This solver performs steady simulations, based on models available in the literature. Results from this analysis tool are verified vs. other numerical results, by comparing the polarization, i.e. the current vs. voltage curve. Here, the evolutionary algorithm-based optimization software EASY of NTUA, which makes use of on-line trained surrogate models to reduce the number of evaluations is used to obtain a front of non-dominated solutions. A bilinear porosity distribution (2D distribution) is used for the GDL along with a uniform distribution for the CL on both the anode and cathode side. It is shown that some of the optimized PEMFC perform better than the baseline one in terms of both performance metrics, with consistent changes along the entire polarization curve. 245 EUROGEN 2023 15 th ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Evolutionary and Deterministic Methods for Design, Optimization and Control N. Gauger, K. Giannakoglou, M. Papadrakakis, J. Periaux (eds.