Research Article

Performance analysis of AS-SOFC fuel cell combining single and sinusoidal flow field: numerical study

¹ Department of Renewable Energies, Laboratory of New and Renewable Energies in Arid Zones (LENREZA), Kasdi Merbah University, Ouargla, Algeria
² Department of Physics, Laboratory of New and Renewable Energies in Arid Zones (LENREZA), Kasdi Merbah University, Ouargla, Algeria
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hadj Lahkder University, Batna, Algeria

^* e-mail: sabrina.sabi2005@gmail.com

Received: 22 February 2021
Received in final form: 6 May 2021
Accepted: 8 May 2021

Abstract

The performance of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) was examined using 3D computational fluid dynamics to model mass and heat flows inside the channels. In the present investigation, a SOFC fuel cell with a new flow field based on a sinusoidal flow has been studied. The latter was tested and compared with a single flow using ANSYS FLUENT. The obtained results showed that at a given operating voltage, the maximum power for the sinusoidal and the single flow fields were 1.43 and 1.35 W/cm², respectively. By taking in addition, into account the concentration, activation and Ohmic losses; it was noticed that the distribution of velocity and temperature for the sinusoidal flow led to bettered results. Furthermore, it was observed that the maximum use of H₂ mass fraction consumed in sinusoidal and single flow field designs were 60% and 55% respectively. Similarly, the highest H₂O mass fraction values produced for the sinusoidal and single flow designs were 42% and 34% respectively. This model was validated and confronted to previous data. The present results agree well with reported studies in literature.