ECS Proceedings Volumes · 2003 · 11 citations · 0 references
EngineeringChemical EngineeringComputational EngineeringComputational Fluid DynamicsComputational Heat TransferSimulation-based DesignFuel CellsFuel Cycle SimulationProcess SimulationCfd SimulationFuel Cell Performance ModelingFuel Cell Stack DesignSolid Oxide Fuel CellsStack Design
As planar solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) stack development progresses and moves on from Watt-range single cells to commercially more interesting kW-range SOFC stacks, a need for adequate modeling capabilities arises to simulate these SOFC stacks properly. Commercially available tools for 3D modeling like Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) programs nowadays allow unstructured meshing for coding even complex design topologies. At the Forschungszentrum Jülich, the transition to the CFD tool Fluent was made. Initial stack models were composed of repeating single-cell units. This contribution also proposes a strategy for speeding up simulations of complete power plant cycles involving the CFD model and a spun-off 1D simplification.