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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Energy Res.
Sec. Fuel Cells, Electrolyzers and Membrane Reactors
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2024.1468702
This article is part of the Research Topic Fuel Cells/ Electrolyzers based Poly-generative Systems for a Green Mobility Transition View all articles

Surrogate-assisted reliability-based design optimization of PEMFC serpentine flow channel

Provisionally accepted
Misganaw Abebe Misganaw Abebe 1*Bonyong Koo Bonyong Koo 1*Min-Geun Kim Min-Geun Kim 2Hyun-Seok Kim Hyun-Seok Kim 3*
  • 1 Kunsan National University, Gunsan, Republic of Korea
  • 2 Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  • 3 Korea Research Institute of Ships & Ocean Engineering (KRISO), Daejeon, Republic of Korea

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    In a fuel cell, flow channels are crucial components responsible for various essential functions that enable the system to operate effectively. The design of a directly coupled flow channel in a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) system, assuming deterministic parameters, has been extensively studied. However, this deterministic approach neglects the inherent uncertainties in system performance during real-life operation, resulting in potentially unreliable and suboptimal performance. To address this issue, we propose a reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) of the PEMFC's channel structure, considering uncertainties in operating parameters. This paper presents a numerical model of the PEMFC in COMSOL, deterministic designs, reliability-based designs and a global sensitivity analysis on the PEMFC cell's potential output and average water activity on the membrane. Although the RBDO approach shows a reduction in cell efficiency compared to the deterministic design, it significantly improves reliability, with increases from 60.92% to 95.10% for cell potential and from 79.31% to 96.85% for water activity.

    Keywords: Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell, Reliability-based design optimization, Surrogate model, Sobol sensitivity analysis, Flow channel

    Received: 22 Jul 2024; Accepted: 05 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Abebe, Koo, Kim and Kim. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Misganaw Abebe, Kunsan National University, Gunsan, Republic of Korea
    Bonyong Koo, Kunsan National University, Gunsan, Republic of Korea
    Hyun-Seok Kim, Korea Research Institute of Ships & Ocean Engineering (KRISO), Daejeon, Republic of Korea

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