Application of Elmer in fuel cell simulations

General discussion about Elmer
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Kaushik Prasad
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Application of Elmer in fuel cell simulations

Post by Kaushik Prasad »

Hello Everyone,

I am very new to Elmer and am planning to use it as a part of my Thesis in the modeling of Hydrogen-Bromine redox flow battery. My first question is: Can Elmer be used in Electrochemical fuel cell flow battery modelling? is there anyone here who has used Elmer before for this application?
Also, from the basics, how does Elmer work? I managed to download to Elmer GUI but am lost what to do next?
Does it have inbuilt physics for applications? How do we build geometries? How do we define Physics? How do we mesh and solve the equation?

I know its a lot I am asking for. But maybe someone can shed some light into few of the doubts I have. It would be of great help.
Hope to hear from someone soon.

Cheers

Kaushik
mzenker
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Re: Application of Elmer in fuel cell simulations

Post by mzenker »

Hi,

there is quite some documentation for Elmer here: https://www.csc.fi/web/elmer/documentation. You can start with the GUI manual and then move on to the tutorials. The Models Manual describes the many solvers Elmer offers.
Geometry definition and meshing is not really in the scope of Elmer. Many Elmer users use gmsh (http://www.geuz.org/gmsh) or Salomé (http://www.salome-platform.org). For postprocessing, i.e. results display, ParaView (http://www.paraview.org) is the tool of choice.

HTH,

Matthias
Kaushik Prasad
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Re: Application of Elmer in fuel cell simulations

Post by Kaushik Prasad »

Hello Matthias,

Thank you very much for your reply. I am sure the links you have sent me will be extremely useful. But do you have any idea if a fuel cell simulation can be carried out in Elmer? Have you come across any supporting physics for the same?

BR,
Kaushik
raback
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Re: Application of Elmer in fuel cell simulations

Post by raback »

Hi Kaushik,

To my understanding fuel cell simulation requires solution of several coupled nonlinear transport equations and energy equation. In principle this is well suited for the finite element machinery of Elmer. Also you would probably need some chemistry module.

To my knowledge Elmer has not been used for the purpose. A good starting point would be the ModelPDE which one could modify for the problem. If the equations and linearization strategy would be well defined and a first implementation for an Elmer & FEM expert would not be many days. So if you have previous experience in FEM programming and mainly lack info on Elmer it is perfectly doable. But if also FEM is new to you the task may be rather daunting and I would perhaps look for existing solutions for the problem.

-Peter
Kaushik Prasad
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Re: Application of Elmer in fuel cell simulations

Post by Kaushik Prasad »

Hello Peter,

I am actually new to both FEM programming and Elmer. I know it is going to be a very big ask if I try and implement the whole thing by myself. But I have a rather simple geometry but the interlinked multi-physics could get quite complicated. It would be much easier for me if the software already had some inbuilt physics which I could use. Do you have any software recommendations for such user friendly fuel cell simulations?

Any suggestions will be largely appreciated.

-Kaushik
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Re: Application of Elmer in fuel cell simulations

Post by raback »

Hi

How about COMSOL?

-Peter
annier
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Re: Application of Elmer in fuel cell simulations

Post by annier »

Hi,
In addition to COMSOL, i would suggest the following pairs of softwares:
1. Cantera + FiPy (Finite Volume Method)
https://charlesreid1.com/wiki/Fipy_and_ ... ffusion_1D

ii. Cantera + OpenFOAM (Finite Volume Method)
https://openfoamwiki.net/index.php/Exte ... ameletFoam

iii. Cantera + Elmer (Finite Element Method)

4. Cantera + MOOSE Framework (Finite Element Method)

Cantera is a software for transport process, chemical kinetics, thermodynamics and combustion analysis.
http://cantera.org/docs/sphinx/html/cyt ... _sofc.html


Yours Sincerely,
Anil Kunwar
Anil Kunwar
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice
Kaushik Prasad
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Re: Application of Elmer in fuel cell simulations

Post by Kaushik Prasad »

Hi Peter,

I have worked with COMSOL before and I know it's really user friendly, but the software is commercially too expensive.

Hello Anil,

Thank you for the suggestions. I will look into the suggested software combinations. But how user friendly are these software's? Like I mentioned before I have no prior experience with C++ programming. I know it is going to be really hard if I decide to do it, but maybe these software combinations could be useful if I decide to keep simple?
What is your suggestion?

-Kaushik
annier
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Re: Application of Elmer in fuel cell simulations

Post by annier »

Hi Kaushik,
The source codes of Cantera are in C++ . As its user interface is in many languages, you can choose the python interface to run Cantera.
If you think starting with C++ will be a difficulty, try these ways:
1. Cantera + Elmer (Fortran)
2. Cantera + FiPy (Python)


Yours Sincerely,
Anil Kunwar
Anil Kunwar
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice
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