Start date : 26 / 05 / 2025
End date : 25 / 05 / 2027

FEDER financing

Total project budget: €160,071.50
Total funding amount other than ERDF: 24,010.72 (Region)

Presentation, objective(s):

The fight against climate change places decarbonized hydrogen at the heart of global energy strategies. This molecule, key to decarbonizing heavy transport and facilitating the storage of intermittent renewable energies, still faces major challenges: high costs, low durability and limited performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs).

Numerical modeling, by simulating internal states inaccessible to sensors, makes it possible to optimize the real-time control of PEMFC stacks by modifying operating conditions (flow rate, pressure, temperature, humidity), thus promising to improve performance and durability.

The OPUS-H2 project aims to further develop an advanced digital twin produced during previous work, AlphaPEM, while strengthening local skills in Réunion through a partnership with the German institute ZSW, a recognized leader in the field. Five key areas structure the approach:

• Improving the digital twin: strengthening AlphaPEM, initially designed as a dynamic 1D model, by integrating additional physical phenomena—heat transfer, a microporous layer, and an extension to a 1D+1D dimension—and refining the humidity control strategy. According to simulations, these improvements would increase power by 60% or efficiency by 15%.
• Experimental validation: testing AlphaPEM and its control strategies on European benches, on single cells and stacks, via polarization curves and impedance spectroscopies.
• Integration of degradation models: estimating the health status of cells (loss of electrochemical surface area, remaining lifespan) to adapt simulations to aging batteries.
• Advanced control strategies: developing AlphaPEM-based algorithms to maintain optimal performance and minimize degradation throughout the lifecycle.
• Accelerated degradation validation: confirm models and strategies via accelerated tests on single cells and stacks, with and without adjustment of operating conditions.

Partners : The ZSW research institute (Baden-Württemberg Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Centre) in Ulm, Germany.

Website