Multi-Scale Analysis of Transport Phenomenon Inside the SOFC Using MD and CFD Techniques

This paper analyzes the transport phenomenon of a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) from micro and macro aspects. The micro-scale model focuses on the ion hopping transportation inside the solid electrolyte and the macro-scale model aims at the flow phenomenon and thermal management inside the diffusion layers and the flow channel. In SOFCs, oxygen ions are conducted through the ceramic membrane of Yttria-Stablized Ziconia (YSZ), which is composed of ZrO₂ and Y₂O₃. This paper uses molecular dynamics (MD) method to evaluate the ion conductivity of the solid electrolyte. Doping with different percentage of Y₂O₃, the ion hopping simulation shows that about 8 mole % gives the optimal performance. Also the higher the operation temperature, the better the ion conduction. Temperature field management is also a critical issue in the SOFC design. A set of three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model (including mass, momentum, energy and concentration equations) inside the porous diffusion layers and the flow channel of the SOFC were employed to estimate the cooling effect under different pattern of flow channel designs. All simulation results were validated with experiments reported from other literatures. The integration of the micro and macro-scale analyses proves to be versatile in the SOFC prototype design.