Hydrogen innovation in Germany

Hydrogen production - especially in Europe - is lagging behind expectations. The industry is working at full speed on the further development of electrolysers and efficient fuel cells. This process can be accelerated with the support of engineering simulations. At the same time, there are valuable approaches for optimizing the hydrogen stacks.

Overall, the challenges for the performance and safety of electrolysers and fuel cells lie in tightness, heat management, flow distribution and behavior in the event of local explosions. Physical tests provide insights into the tightness and possible optimizations to the structure of the stack. However, not in such detail as simulations do.

Explosions in one or more cells, as well as explosions within the channels, can be simulated and their effects understood. In physical tests, valuable information can only be obtained at individual sensor positions. The complete explosion event cannot be traced in its entirety. In addition, a new electrolyzer has to be built for each test.

The resulting pressure distributions from an explosion, which are obtained via a simulation, can be transferred to the FE model as time functions for the actual verification and evaluated. In particular, tightness is also a decisive evaluation criterion here in order to limit explosion sources locally. As the holistic simulation shows the sequence of the explosion very precisely, pressure propagation can be better understood using the images and videos.

The great advantage of engineering simulation is that many of the tests and requirements from ISO 22734 - hydrogen generators based on the electrolysis of water - can be investigated and optimized using simulation, including the pressure test according to 5.2.5, mechanical strength according to 5.2.13 or the stability test according to 5.2.14.

Simulations can be used to analyze temperature and current density distributions, which influence the efficiency and service life of the cells. Merkle CAE Solutions is also already working on simulations of new materials, such as fabrics and metal foams as electrode materials, in order to increase the current density and thus the performance of electrolysers and fuel cells.

“The size and therefore the performance, structure, tightness, safety and effectiveness of stacks can be significantly improved using simulations. We are currently implementing this in several projects for industrial use. The benefits of simulations cannot be emphasized enough. We are increasingly dealing with technologies that are more comprehensible, but not transparent enough, through purely physical tests. We want to give our customers recommendations for optimizing the structure, improving efficiency and accelerating the technologies to market maturity. Simulations, especially in the hydrogen environment, have already provided valuable support,” says Dipl.-Ing. (TU) Stefan Merkle, Managing Partner of Merkle CAE Solutions GmbH.

Merkle CAE Solutions has been working on the development of electrolyzers and fuel cells and their peripherals since the end of the 1990s. Parallel to its existing experience, Merkle CAE Solutions is an active partner in several research projects for the further development of hydrogen technology, including AEM water electrolysis.

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