Investigation of parameters affecting fuel cell performance in three dimensional models

Our world's energy demand is increasing day by day depending on the increasing population and the technological developments. Today, fossil fuels are used as the main source for energy production. As well as the harmful effects of gases such as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide on the environment, fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and petroleum are likely to be run out of someday. Work on energy resources that can be used as an alternative to fossil fuels in this framework continues to increase. One of the most popular energy sources used as an alternative to fossil fuels is renewable energy sources. Producing electricity from the wind turbines and the solar panels is the mostly known systems as renewable energy sources. Despite the being a renewable and energy sources wind and sun have disadvantages on energy supply and continuinuty. These systems vary in production amount depending on the season and daily weather conditions are a problem in terms of energy supply demand balance. Another method, nuclear energy, is seen as a high-risk alternative in terms of both the production and the disposal of the generated waste. At this point fuel cells which uses hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity and does not emit green house gases come forward as clean, continuous and sustainable energy sources. In this thesis we made simulations to investigate and improve fuel cell performance. In these simulations, we tried to validate the experimental results with the results we obtained from our model by referring to a previous experimental work. After this, we compare the performance of two fuel cells with different geometries. Fuel cell which had better performance was used in investigation of the effects of operating conditions such as temperature and pressure. As a result; energy from fuel cells, one of the technologies that could be an alternative to fossil fuels in our world, where energy needs are increasing day by day, has increased in parallel with the increase in pressure, temperature, porosity and mass flow rate.