Thermo-fluidic modeling of a fuel cell stack using OpenFOAM

Due to the advancing depletion of fossil energy resources, a clean and efficient energy production is of interest. In this context, fuel cells are found promising. The present work focuses on Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC). A thermo-fluidic Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model of the device is implemented in the Open Source CFD solver OpenFOAM to support the current research targeting the long-term stability of the SOFC. Following the idea of the Distributed Resistance Analogy (DRA), a homogenization approach is used to decrease the complexity of the relevant phenomena of heat transfer and fluid flow. The flow in a common application is calculated. The model is validated on the basis of an existing, experimentally validated model in ANSYS Fluent.