Hydrogen is considered one of the technologies for climate-neutral energy supply in the future. Efficiency and durability are important for the commercial success of PEM fuel cells and electrolysers. Current research projects are focusing in particular on dealing with multiphase effects. In fuel cells, gaseous hydrogen and oxygen react to form liquid water, while in electrolysis, gaseous hydrogen and oxygen are produced from liquid water. The new phase that is created in this process must be effectively removed via the microchannels of the electrochemical converter. Inadequate removal can reduce efficiency, accelerate degradation, and cause permanent damage. An optimized design of the distribution fields is crucial for the efficient removal of the resulting phase, as they distribute the mass flow to the microchannels and bundle it again. There is currently no optimization strategy for the design of these distribution fields that takes the influence of two-phase effects into account.

The objective of this project is to address this gap by developing a multiphase model suitable for large-scale analysis. To enable faster design evaluations, a reduced-order model is subsequently derived. Building on this foundation, a workflow is developed to optimize the distribution fields while accounting for multiphase effects.