On the wellposedness for a fuel cell problem

TL;DR

This paper proves the existence of weak solutions for a complex coupled system modeling fuel cell behavior, incorporating fluid flow, electrochemical reactions, and thermal effects with nonlinear dependencies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel coupled Stokes/Darcy-TEC model including Joule heating and nonlinear parameter dependencies, with new existence results under small data conditions.

Findings

Existence of weak solutions established under smallness assumptions.

Inclusion of Joule effect and nonlinear dependencies in the model.

Quantitative estimates for solutions derived.

Abstract

This paper investigates the existence of weak solutions to two problems set of elliptic equations in adjoining domains, with Beavers--Joseph--Saffman and regularized Butler--Volmer boundary conditions being prescribed on the common interfaces, porous-fluid and membrane, respectively. Mathematically, the modeling tool is the coupled Stokes/Darcy problem, which consists of the Stokes equation on one part of the domain coupled to the Darcy equation, where the flow velocities are small and mainly driven by the pressure gradient in porous medium, completed by the thermoelectrochemical (TEC) system, which consists of the energy equation and the mass transport associated with electrochemical reactions, where the fluxes are given by generalized Fourier, Fick and Ohm laws, by including the Dufour--Soret and Peltier--Seebeck cross effects, in the multidimensional domain. The present model includes macrohomogeneous models for both hydrogen and methanol crossover. The novelty in the presented model lies in the presence of the Joule effect into the Stokes/Darcy-TEC system altogether to the quasilinear character given by temperature dependence of the physical parameters such as the viscosities and the diffusion coefficients, by the concentration-temperature dependence of cross-effects coefficients, and by the pressure dependence of the permeability. The purpose of the present work is to derive quantitative estimates for solutions to explicit smallness conditions on the data. We use fixed point and compactness arguments based on the quantitative estimates of approximated solutions.