Massimo Guarnieri
University of Padua, Italy
Title: A selective hybrid stochastic approach to proton exchange membrane fuel cells multi parameter identification
Biography
Biography: Massimo Guarnieri
Abstract
The characterization of fuel cells involves a number of physical parameters which are important for quantifying and comparing the performance of the materials and for trimming analytical and numerical models. Careful ex situ measurements of such parameters can be performed by means of a number of diagnostic techniques, whose results are however not completely consistent with fuel cell operation due to several side effect. Conversely, in situ measurements can provide meaningful operational values, but a very few techniques are available to determine a limited number of parameters. An alternative consists in multiple parameter identification from multiple fundamental measurements performed in different conditions, e.g., at different temperature, pressure, concentration, and humidification. If there is only one unknown parameter, the solution is easy, requiring just a statistical interpolating technique. In the case of multiple unknown parameters, the problem becomes increasingly challenging with the number of parameters, as duplicity problem emerges, i.e., several groups of parameters may lead to the same performance (e.g. polarization curve). A number of numerical tools have been proposed to face this kind of problems. Stochastic mathematical models have been applied to the analysis of fuel cells for more than ten years, but typically to specific problems and by means of semi-empirical models, with an increased number of articles published in the last years. We present an original formulation that makes use of an accurate zero-dimensional multi-physical model of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell and of two cooperating stochastic algorithms, particle swarm optimization (PSO) and differential evolution (DE), that proved to be successful in extracting multiple material parameters (exchange current density, mass transfer coefficient, diffusivity, conductivity, and activation barriers) from the experimental data of multiple polarization curves (i.e., in situ measurements) under controlled temperature, gas back pressure and humidification. The method is suitable for application in other fields where fitting of multiphysics nonlinear models is involved.
Recent Publications:
1. Alotto P., Guarnieri M., Moro F., “Redox Flow Batteries for the storage of renewable energy: a review”, Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews 29 (2014): 325-335.
2. Guarnieri M., Alotto P., Moro F., “Modeling the Performance of Hydrogen-Oxygen Unitized Regenerative Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells for Energy Storage”, Journal of Power Sources 297, (11), (2015): 23-32.
3. Guarnieri M., Negro E., Di Noto V., Alotto P., “A Selective Hybrid Stochastic Strategy for Fuel-Cell Multi-Parameter Identification”, Journal of Power Sources 332 (2016): 249–264.
4. Spagnuolo G., Petrone G., Mattavelli P., Guarnieri M., “Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries: Potentials and Challenges of an Emerging Storage Technology”, IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine 10 (4), (2016): 20-31.
5. Maggiolo D., Picano F., Guarnieri M., “Flow and dispersion in anisotropic porous media: a Lattice-Boltzmann study”, Physics of Fluids, 28 (10), (2016): 102001.
6. Moro F., Trovò A., Bortolin S., Del Col D., Guarnieri M., “An alternative low-loss stack architecture for vanadium redox flow battery: comparative assessment”, Journal of Power Sources, 340 (2017)