Electrodes Two-Phase and pH Boundary Layers Multiphysics Modelling in a Hydrodynamic Alkaline Water Electrolyzer

The presented work is a multiphysics calculation using Ansys-Fluent® CFD modelling of a hydrodynamic alkaline water electrolyzer. This work will start with an exhaustive review of the transport properties necessary for the multiphysics modelling of alkaline water electrolyzer. A recently published article provides experimental data and the correlations needed to calculate thermo-physical properties such as electrical conductivity, density, viscosity, heat capacity, heat and mass transfer diffusion coefficients as a function of temperature and electrolyte mass fraction for two classical alkaline electrolytes (KOH, NaOH). Different interpolation models from various authors are compared to raw experimental data. The goal of this work was to give to the modeler the correlations needed for the simulation of alkaline water electrolysis. Thus, the two electrodes two-phase boundary layers can be calculated with precision. Calculations under discrete phase modelling (DPM) and Euler-Euler hypothesis have been performed and are presented. Figure 1