The general challenges involved in the development of fuel cell systems such as PEM, SOFC, DMFC and SAFC, range from novel material development to system (or stack) performance optimization. To truly understand fuel cell performance, engineers and scientists need to conduct analyses to visualize issues associated with gas/liquid flow, chemical and electrochemical reactions and thermal management. While experimentation is needed to quantify material behavior such as fuel reformer catalyst performance, porous diffusivities of gas diffusion layers (GDLs) and the performance of the membrane electrode assembly (MEA), additional cell/stack level testing is also needed to assess the system's overall performance (e.g. local current density variation in the current collector, local temperature variation, relative humidity in the gas channels and polarization curve). Detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can help reduce and guide the cell/stack level testing therefore aiding the fuel cell system development process. Ultimately, an optimized fuel cell design that offers superior power generation, reliability and durability can be attained much faster by incorporating numerical modeling in the design process.

For more information about our fuel cell models, please contact your nearest Fluent office.