Towards a comprehensive, high-fidelity, multi-physics simulation framework for alkaline water electrolyzers
Marco Dreoni, Francesco Balduzzi, Francesco Maria Ferro, Kevin Panichi, Eleonora Ponticorvo, Giovanni Ferrara, Alessandro Bianchini
Abstract
To enable the industrial upscaling of alkaline electrolyzers, a deeper understanding of all the different “physics” involved is needed. To this end, while the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is essential, comprehensive 3D CFD models are still rare, with stack simulations often hampered by computational cost. The present study addresses this research gap by introducing a detailed multi-physics CFD model for alkaline electrolyzers, integrating two-phase flow, electrochemistry, thermal effects (including Faraday and Joule heat sources, plus reaction heating in the thermal equation) and interaction between anodic and cathodic half-cells. Moreover, unlike previous models, which simulate one cell alone, our approach allows for the simulation of any specific cell within the stack by enabling boundary conditions to be tailored for the positioning of the cell at hand. The model successfully replicated the expected fluid-dynamic and heating trend of a real-cell geometry and allowed highlighting critical areas for design improvement. • Novel multi-physics CFD modeling of a complete alkaline electrolyzer cell. • Inclusion of bubble coverage effect and electrolysis-driven heat sources. • Analysis of the mutual influence of the main variables in working and start-up conditions. • Hot spots detected for cell design optimization. • Any of the cells of the stack simulated without the computational costs of a full stack geometry.