TY - JOUR
T1 - Validated reduction and accelerated numerical computation of a model for the proton exchange membrane fuel cell
AU - Ly, H.
AU - Birgersson, E.
AU - Vynnycky, M.
AU - Sasmito, A. P.
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - Amongst the severest drawbacks of many models for the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) are excessive memory requirements and computing time; consequently, using these for stack modeling is impractical. While reduced models alleviate these difficulties to some extent, most of the available reduced models do not preserve geometrical resolution. In this paper, we present a reduced model for a PEMFC that both reduces computational requirements and preserves geometrical resolution. The model is for a PEMFC equipped with porous flow fields and takes into account conservation of mass, momentum, species, energy, and charge. The results of the reduced model are then verified against those of the full model and validated against global polarization curves and local current-density distributions for three different experimental fuel cells; good agreement is obtained. In computational terms, the solution of the reduced model is found to require between 2 and 3 orders of magnitude less random access memory and execution time than that of the full model; furthermore, it scales well when run on up to four processors. Finally, we discuss the suitability of our reduced model for extension to a PEMFC stack model comprising tens or hundreds of single cells.
AB - Amongst the severest drawbacks of many models for the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) are excessive memory requirements and computing time; consequently, using these for stack modeling is impractical. While reduced models alleviate these difficulties to some extent, most of the available reduced models do not preserve geometrical resolution. In this paper, we present a reduced model for a PEMFC that both reduces computational requirements and preserves geometrical resolution. The model is for a PEMFC equipped with porous flow fields and takes into account conservation of mass, momentum, species, energy, and charge. The results of the reduced model are then verified against those of the full model and validated against global polarization curves and local current-density distributions for three different experimental fuel cells; good agreement is obtained. In computational terms, the solution of the reduced model is found to require between 2 and 3 orders of magnitude less random access memory and execution time than that of the full model; furthermore, it scales well when run on up to four processors. Finally, we discuss the suitability of our reduced model for extension to a PEMFC stack model comprising tens or hundreds of single cells.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=69549120145&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1149/1.3160571
DO - 10.1149/1.3160571
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:69549120145
SN - 0013-4651
VL - 156
SP - B1156-B1168
JO - Journal of the Electrochemical Society
JF - Journal of the Electrochemical Society
IS - 10
ER -