3D Coupled Thermofluid-Thermomechanical Modelling and Experimental Validation of a Whole Solid Oxide Fuel Cell System

The successful optimisation of the complete integrated solid oxide fuel cell system requires an improved thermomechanical management, encompassing the interaction among whole system components. The level of improvement depends upon mastering the design of the components as well as gathering knowledge about the critical locations susceptible to stress. Forschungszentrum Jülich is giving particular attention to the 3D computational design and optimisation of the integrated fuel cell module. The presented study demonstrates a brief review of the conference content, depicting the system level coupled 3D computational model. In general, the presented work has been a full transient analysis that considers all relevant components of the integrated fuel cell module, including the fuel cell stack, pre-reformer, air pre-heater and the afterburner. The predictions are validated using measurements. The developed computational model provides qualitative benefits such as the ability to investigate different heating-up concepts, efficiency gains, determination of the thermomechanically critical regions and the availability of valuable information early in the process. Moreover, it replaces prohibitive experiments