CFD Modelling and Simulation of PEMFCs in STAR-CCM+

The durability of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) remains challenging compared with other energy systems. Digital twins can help to understand and reduce the degradation of fuel cell performance and support model-based design. This paper explores the possibilities of PEMFC modelling using Siemens Simcenter STAR-CCM+ software. A general roadmap for creating PEMFC digital twins in STAR-CCM+ is presented. The goal is to create and validate a digital twin of a 20 W open cathode PEMFC stack. The simulation results are analysed in a stepwise manner. A basic mesh study is used combined with the evolution of the residuals in order to find a good mesh quality, which is crucial in achieving useful results. This method and a parametric analysis show that certain values defined in the literature significantly influence the simulation results, the intrinsic gas diffusion layer permeability is found to have the biggest impact. The outcome becomes unreliable if realistic values are used as they are outside the limits of the software. However, the simulations do converge when the standard parameter values of the software are used. In addition, the complexity of the geometry has a large influence on the stability and reliability of the simulation.