Fuel cell digital twins - Modelling framework for aerospace grade megawatt-scale hydrogen fuel cells

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SMS Fuel Cell Systems Ltd's vision is to deliver zero-emissions, megawatt scale fuel cell propulsion systems primarily for regional aircraft markets, utilising a digital twin approach to optimise the design and operation of the mass transit solutions enabled by this technology. The aim of this project is to develop a digital twin simulation of a fuel cell with larger active areas to enable class-leading megawatt-scale stack development. This helps us to better understand the behaviour of the fuel cell systems in a virtual environment before more costly work is undertaken to develop iron bird demonstrators for physical testing. The key objectives of the project are to develop innovative and high-power density megawatt-scale fuel cell stack designs, performing a set of coupled electrochemical and thermal simulations to demonstrate functional advantages of the approach. The developed modelling framework will allow us to optimise key parametric factors rapidly, and be done via a surrogate fuel cell digital twin approach which replicates the physics from a conventional simulation but at a fraction of the computational cost. This allows for broader exploration of the design space and implementation of advanced model-based control approaches. Digital Twin techniques will help enable delivery of fuel cell technology scale up from kilowatt to megawatt systems. At the megawatt scale, our studies show that we can improve on the current generation of kilowatt fuel cells to create a more power dense and simpler fuel cell propulsion system. This will help improve the performance of a hydrogen fuel cell powertrain to meet the strict weight, volume and certification requirements for an aircraft application.