The Application Gallery features COMSOL Multiphysics® tutorial and demo app files pertinent to the electrical, structural, acoustics, fluid, heat, and chemical disciplines. You can use these examples as a starting point for your own simulation work by downloading the tutorial model or demo app file and its accompanying instructions.
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A stationary 3D model of a generic fuel cell cathode describing the mass fraction distribution of oxygen, water, and nitrogen, as well as the current distribution. The model uses Darcy's Law to describe convection, and couples this to Maxwell-Stefan diffusivities to also describe mass ... Read More
A fuel cell stack operates at temperatures just below 100 °C, which means that it has to be heated at start-up. The fuel cell stack consists of unit cell of anode, membrane, and cathode connected in series through bipolar plates. This study presents a model that couples the thermal and ... Read More
This tutorial models the thermal management of a polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell stack. Operating the stack with a similar temperature profile for all cells is important since an uneven temperature distribution may otherwise result in nonuniform water vapor condensation and ... Read More
A fuel cell unit cell is modeled using the full Butler-Volmer expression for the anodic and cathodic charge transfer reactions. The anodic and cathodic overpotentials depend on the local ionic and electronic potentials, which are obtained from the charge balance equations for ionic and ... Read More
This tutorial models how the relative humidity of the inlet gases impacts the performance of a low-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane-electrode assembly. The model includes humidity-dependent ionomer (electrolyte) conductivities, gas phase mass transport and water ionomer ... Read More
This example extends the Fuel Cell Cathode tutorial to also include liquid water transport in the oxygen electrode. Liquid water is produced using a user-defined expression for vapor condensation, depending on the relative humidity level in the gas phase. An experimental capillary ... Read More
This example focuses on the species transport within the gas diffusion layers (GDLs) of a proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell. The geometry models a cell with two adjacent flow channels of different pressures, a situation that may occur in a cell with serpentine flow channels, or in ... Read More
This model presents a study of the current density distribution in a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). The model includes the full coupling between the mass balances at the anode and cathode, the momentum balances in the gas channels, the gas flow in the porous electrodes, the balance of ... Read More
This model example investigates the transport of reactants and water in a high temperature PEMFC. The model includes mass and momentum transport phenomena in the flow channels, gas diffusion layers (GDLs), and porous electrodes, as well as electrochemical currents in the GDLs, the porous ... Read More
In small PEM fuel cell systems (in the sub-100 W range) no active devices for cooling or air transport are normally used. This is due to the desire to minimize parasitic power losses from pumps and fans, and to reduce the system complexity, size, and cost. The reactants at the cathode ... Read More