Electrochemical Cell Calculations with OpenFOAM

Professor W. Lehnert is a member of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University, where he is Professor of Modeling in Electrochemical Process Engineering. In parallel, he heads the Functional Layers department at the Institute for Energy and Climate Research - Electrochemical Process Engineering at Forschungszentrum Jülich. Prof. Lehnert studied physics at the University of Bonn. He received his PhD from the University of Düsseldorf and habilitated at Ulm University. After his PhD, he was a post-doctoral researcher at Forschungszentrum Jülich, working on 3D modeling and simulation at the stack, cell, and component levels in the field of solid oxide and polymer electrolyte fuel cells. In addition to developing his own codes, he established commercial CFD software for SOFC cell modeling. After several years in the automotive industry, where he worked on fuel cell technology for mobile applications, he returned to research, where he took leading positions in the field of fuel cell research. There he conducted research primarily on polymer electrolyte fuel cells and later also on polymer electrolyte electrolysers. In the area of high-temperature polymer electrolyte fuel cells, modeling and simulation is performed at the cell and stack level. In the low-temperature area, the focus is on the simulation of two-phase flows in fuel cell and electrolyzer components. All simulations are accompanied by ex-situ, in situ and operando experiments for model validation. Prof. Lehnert has authored more than 200 scientific papers, contributed to 18 book chapters. Prof. Lehnert has been teaching at universities since 2001. His lectures deal with applied electrochemistry, electrochemical process engineering, and modeling and simulation of electrochemical systems. More than 30 PhD students finished their PhD under his supervision in the field of fuel cells and electrolysis. At all stages of his career, he has been involved in national and international collaborations with external partners from industry