A study on the proton ceramic fuel cell performance using fluid simulation software / Muhammad Irsyad Missnan

Combustion engine was known as a main device that can convert chemical energy in a fuel to electrical energy. However, this device produces massive harmful emission that is polluting the environment. Fuel cell is invented as a new device with cleaner emission. Fuel cells convert chemical energy in a hydrogen or hydrocarbon fuel to electrical energy via a healthier process because it only releases water and heat as its emission. One of the fuel cells is named as PCFC (Proton Ceramic Fuel Cell) that utilise hydrogen as their fuel to generate electricity. Different composition of hydrogen will affect the performance of the fuel cell such as their power density. To operate PCFC in 100% hydrogen gas are time-consuming and costly. Thus, in this study, the following two objectives were carried out: i) To obtain a better understanding on the modelling and simulation in the PCFC using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach, and ii) To simulate the species mass fraction, temperature distribution and power density of PCFC in 20 - 100% hydrogen gas using CFD model. This study utilised ANSYS 2022 CFD software in modelling and simulating of the PCFC. Two sets of parameters data (experimental and standard data) were used throughout the study. Both data were simulated with two percentage of hydrogen, 20% and 100%. The different fuel percentage did affect the hydrogen mass fraction, and the power density of the fuel cell. However, the temperature distribution did not show any sign of changes with the changes of fuel percentages. Higher fuel percentage made the hydrogen mass fraction to be lower. For power density, the higher fuel percentage lead to higher power density. Maximum power density for experimental data at 100% hydrogen was 338.59 mW/cm3 compared to 20% was 332.33 mW/cm3.