What Can the Fuel Cell & Electrolyzer Module Do?
The Fuel Cell & Electrolyzer Module extends the COMSOL Multiphysics environment with customized physics interfaces for modeling of fuel cells. These physics interfaces provide tools for building detailed models of the configuration of the electrodes and electrolyte in electrochemical cells. They include descriptions of the electrochemical reactions and the transport properties that influence the performance of fuel cells and other electrochemical cells. With this module, you have the perfect tools to investigate the influence of using different materials, geometric configurations, and operating conditions on the performance of a cell.
The physics interfaces include chemical species transport, current balances, heat transfer, and fluid flow in electrochemical cells. You can use the module to investigate the performance of fuel cells at different operating conditions for different electrode configurations, structures and dimensions, for separators, current collectors and current feeders, and for the choice of materials and chemistry.
The module adds the electrochemistry interfaces, which contains the Primary Current Distribution, Secondary Current Distribution, and Tertiary Current Distribution, Nernst-Planck interfaces. These are available for solid non-porous electrodes and for porous electrodes. General tertiary current distribution models can also be set up using the Chemical Species Transport interfaces. In addition to these generic physics interfaces, the Electrochemistry branch contains dedicated Hydrogen Fuel Cell and Water Electrolyzer interfaces.
The tailored physics interfaces mentioned above are also complemented with extended functionality in other physics interfaces for chemical species transport, heat transfer, and fluid flow.
The physics interfaces for chemical species transport of neutral species are extended by adding functionality that directly couple to electrochemical reactions defined in the physics interfaces for electrochemical cells. A typical example is the transport and reactions of gaseous species in gas diffusion electrodes and gas channels in fuel cells.
Heat Transfer Interfaces includes heat sources that describe ohmic losses in the electrodes and electrolyte and heat sources due to electrochemical reactions in electrochemical cells.
The fluid flow capabilities are extended for laminar flow, where the chemical species transport and the energy balances influence the properties of the flow.
Finally, the Fuel Cell & Electrolyzer Module includes model examples of the following electrochemical cells:
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Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC)
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Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC)
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Molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFC)
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Direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC)
See Where Do I Access the Documentation and Application Libraries? to locate and use these examples and tutorials as a starting point to your own investigations.