NUMERICAL SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF FLOW FIELD STRUCTURE OF PEM ELECTROLYZER

Hong Juan; Wei Wei; Liu Yanyan; Cheng Dongya; Wang Yujie; Chen Song

doi:10.19912/j.0254-0096.tynxb.2024-0517

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Acta Energiae Solaris Sinica ›› 2025, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (7) : 559-567. DOI: 10.19912/j.0254-0096.tynxb.2024-0517

Special Topics of Academic Papers at the 86th Annual Meeting of the China Association for Science and Technology

NUMERICAL SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF FLOW FIELD STRUCTURE OF PEM ELECTROLYZER

Hong Juan¹, Wei Wei¹, Liu Yanyan¹, Cheng Dongya¹, Wang Yujie¹, Chen Song²

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Abstract

The flow field structure at the anode side of the proton exchange membrane （PEM） electrolyzer has an important influence on the efficiency of hydrogen production from electrolyzed water. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the physical field distribution inside the electrolyzer in depth according to electrochemical and computational fluid dynamics theories, and further optimize the flow field structure of the PEM electrolyzer. The paper firstly establishes a three-dimensional model of the multi-serpentine flow field structure of PEM electrolyzer through Comsol Multiphysics simulation software, analyzing how the internal electric and flow fields affect electrolytic performance. Secondly, based on the results of simulation analysis, three shunt improvement structures, namely, double shunt, quadruple shunt and quintuple shunt, are proposed and analyzed by numerical simulation for the three structures. The simulation results show that the quadruple shunt structure has the best performance, with a decrease in oxygen accumulation of about 3%, an increase in gas discharge efficiency of 22%, and a decrease in overall cell voltage of about 0.0173 V compared to the original multi-serpentine flow field. On this basis, a PEM electrolyzer experimental platform with a quadruple structure was built. The experiment proves that the electrolyzer voltage is reduced by about 0.0136 V and the energy consumption is reduced, which is basically consistent with the simulation results.

Key words

electrolysis / numerical analysis / flow fields / proton exchange membrane （PEM） electrolyzer / quadruple shunt structure

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Hong Juan, Wei Wei, Liu Yanyan, Cheng Dongya, Wang Yujie, Chen Song. NUMERICAL SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF FLOW FIELD STRUCTURE OF PEM ELECTROLYZER[J]. Acta Energiae Solaris Sinica. 2025, 46(7): 559-567 https://doi.org/10.19912/j.0254-0096.tynxb.2024-0517

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