Computational fluid dynamic simulation of thermal convection in green fuel cells with finite volume and lattice Boltzmann methods

Beg, OA; Javaid, H; Beg, TA; Prasad, VR; Kuharat, S; Kadir, A; Leonard, HJ; Burby, ML; Jouri, WS; Ozturk, Z

Abstract

The modern thrust for green energy technologies has witnessed considerable efforts in developing efficient, environmentally friendly fuel cells. This has been particularly so in the automotive sector which is the dominant mode of personal transport in the 21stcentury. Toyota has led this fuel revolution and has already implemented a number of hybrid vehicles commercially. PEM(Proton-exchange membrane fuel cells, also known as polymer electrolyte membrane), AFC(alkaline)and PAFC (phosphoric acid) and SOFC (solid oxide fuel cells) using Hydrogen/Oxygen, in particular, havedemonstrated significant popularity. Such fuel cells have several distinct advantages include reduced emissions (generally water vapour and some heat) and an absence of moving parts requiring significantly less maintenance than conventional internal combustion engines. Salford university has established a major vision for “smart living” and eco-friendly hydrogen fuel cells exemplify this approach. Motivated by this, in the present work a detailed computational fluid dynamic simulation of simplified fuel cell systems arepresented. ANSYS FLUENT finite volume commercial software (version 19) has been deployed to simulate flow characteristics and temperature distributions in a 2-dimensional enclosure replicating a hybrid hydrogen-oxygenfuel cellof the PEM, AFC/PAFC and SOFC type. This work has been conducted as a final year undergraduate project in mechanical engineering (by the second author), supervised by the first author. Further input from co-authors has refined the simulations and identified important physical implications for the next generation of hydrogen-oxygenfuel cells. Extensive visualization of transport phenomena in the fuel cell is included i.e. streamline and isotherm contours. Validation of the finite volume computations has also been achieved with a thermal Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) achieving excellent agreement. Mesh independence tests are also performed. The simulations constitute a first step and are being extended to consider three-dimensional transient circulationflows in hydrogen fuel cells.

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: ICETP 2021: 15TH Int. Conference on Energy and Thermal Physics
• Start Date: Jan 18, 2021
• End Date: Jan 19, 2021
• Acceptance Date: Apr 3, 2020
• Publication Date: Jan 19, 2021
• Deposit Date: Apr 17, 2020
• Publisher URL: https://waset.org/energy-and-thermal-physics-conference-in-january-2021-in-rome
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference