Abstract
The performance of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) was examined using 3D computational fluid dynamics to model mass and heat flows inside the channels. In the present investigation, a SOFC fuel cell with a new flow field based on a sinusoidal flow has been studied. The latter was tested and compared with a single flow using ANSYS FLUENT. The obtained results showed that at a given operating voltage, the maximum power for the sinusoidal and the single flow fields were 1.43 and 1.35 W/cm2, respectively. By taking in addition, into account the concentration, activation and Ohmic losses; it was noticed that the distribution of velocity and temperature for the sinusoidal flow led to bettered results. Furthermore, it was observed that the maximum use of H2mass fraction consumed in sinusoidal and single flow field designs were 60% and 55% respectively. Similarly, the highest H2O mass fraction values produced for the sinusoidal and single flow designs were 42% and 34% respectively. This model was validated and confronted to previous data. The present results agree well with reported studies in literature.
Highlights
Nowadays, fuel cell technology is a fast growing scientific and technical field
It is constituted of the fuelflow channel, anode gas diffusion layer (A-GDL), anode catalyst layer (A-CL), electrolyte, cathode catalyst layer (C-CL), cathode gas diffusion layer (C-GDL), air-flow channel, and anode and cathode collectors
These results signify that the reaction rates at the sinusoidal flow design are greater than those detected in the single flow
Summary
Fuel cell technology is a fast growing scientific and technical field. It is in the process of constituting the core of the industrial revolution. The most often mentioned model given by Achenbach [10] studied with time-dependent the effects of flow manifolding with utilizing differential and finite equations that allow determining heat and mass transfer in SOFCs. The researchers found that the counter-flow design has an impact in improving the performance compared to cross and co-flow. Hawkes et al [12,13] presented 3D simulations on a SOEC stack under cross-flow configuration They have discussed profiles of activation overpotential, temperature, operating potential, current density, Nernst potential, the gas composition of anode-side and cathode-side and hydrogen production at several deferent operating conditions of the stack using ANSYS FLUENT. The simulation results showed that the ratio of the outlet to the inlet
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