Introduction

This video aims to talk about Fuel Cell Concepts. This lesson will give you a general introduction to the fuel cell and an overview of available sections of fuel cell settings in ANSYS Fluent.

This product is the first chapter of the Fuel Cell Training Course.

We introduce the working environment of the fuel cell models in ANSYS Fluent. This introduction will be detailed and comprehensive So that you will not have any questions after reading it.

There are three different Fuel Cell modules in the Ansys Fluent software. These fuel cell models are add-on modules in Fluent. These fuel cell models are:

• ّFuel Cell and Electrolysis Model
• PEM Fuel Cell Model
• SOFC with Unresolved Electrolyte Model

We use the PEM Fuel Cell (PEMFC) and SOFC modules to simulate two different types of fuel cells independently. The PEMFC model is used to simulate the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell, and the SOFC is used to simulate the solid oxide fuel cell.

This is while the Fuel Cell and Electrolysis model consists of several different sub-models. By the Fuel Cell and Electrolysis model, we can simulate several different types of fuel cells and electrolyzers. These fuel cell sub-models are:

• PEMFC
• SOFC
• Electrolysis

The first two sub-models (PEMFC and SOFC) are related to fuel cell modeling, and the third sub-model is related to electrolyzer modeling. We use the PEMFC model to simulate the proton exchange membrane fuel cell, and the SOFC to simulate the solid oxide fuel cell, respectively. Also, we use the electrolysis submodel to model the electrolyzer. Note that electrolysis is the reverse of fuel cells.

We introduced all these models and sub-models comprehensively and in detail.

However, before setting up the Fuel cell modules in ANSYS Fluent, we provided a comprehensive explanation of the fuel cell concepts.

First, we presented a schematic of the overall fuel cell configuration and introduced all its different layers. Then, we discussed the electrochemistry concepts and electrochemical reactions taking place in the fuel cell. We described properties and boundary conditions related to the fuel cell. Finally, we introduced the user-defined scalars (UDS) and user-defined Memories (UDM) in the fuel cell model.