A new open-source PEMFC simulation tool for easy assessment of material parameterizations

After almost three decades of PEM fuel cell modelling, there is a large need for standardization and establishment of a common basis in the development of PEMFC models, not only for numerical simulation purposes, but also to test and validate MEA material parameterizations from experimental measurements. Until recently, there were only two open-source codes capable of simulating the state of the art in PEMFC modeling at the scale of single cells or MEAs: OpenFCST, a rather heavy FEM package consisting of more than 120 000 lines of C++ code (not counting library dependencies), and FAST-FC, a finite volume tool built on top of OpenFOAM, consisting of about 12 000 lines of code (not counting the required OpenFOAM). Albeit highly capable, these tools require significant effort and programming know-how to be set up and modified, and they are not well suited for easy substitution of material parameterizations or extensive parameter studies in sufficiently short computation times. We have recently developed the first open standalone MATLAB implementation of a full-blown, steady-state, non-isothermal, macro-homogeneous two-phase MEA model for low-temperature PEM fuel cells. It implements the most dominant through-plane transport processes in a 5-layer membrane electrode assembly: the transport of charge, energy, gas species and water. With a focus on code simplicity, compactness, portability, transparency, accessibility and free availability, our program is an ideal candidate for the assessment of new material parameterizations that may originate e.g. from experimental data. Thanks to the very short runtime of just a few seconds on an ordinary PC, extensive parameter studies and quick substitution of modeling assumptions or material properties are now possible with our tool without requiring deep programming knowledge or compilation of large software libraries. We demonstrate how the program may be used to quantitatively understand and evaluate PEM fuel cell material properties or measurement data