The researchers Maciej Marczak, Evans Pericoli and Giuseppe Sassone participated in the 21st edition of the OpenFOAM Workshop, which took place in Guimarães (Portugal), from June 29th – July 3rd, 2026 and was hosted by the Institute of Polymers and Composites from the University of Minho.
Since its inception in 2006, the OpenFOAM® Workshop has attracted a large group of users and developers from both industry and academia, who are interested in OpenFOAM® Technology, which currently covers a wide range of applications.
Maciej Marczak – researcher in the BET Unit of the Center – gave the talk titled “A Generalized Multi-Physics Solver for All-Liquid and Hybrid Redox Flow Batteries“. As part of the IPCEI project, a numerical solver for redox flow and hybrid batteries was developed in OpenFOAM. The presentation highlighted recent advances in the model’s development, including:
- Implementation of a hybrid electrode model featuring electrodeposition phenomena.
- Full transient battery simulations.
- Validation against both experimental and literature data.
The PhD student of the HyRES Unit Evans Pericoli presented his work in the poster “First-Stage Metal Hydride H2 Compressor: a Multiscale Modelling Approach“. The PhD activities, framed in the IPCEI Hy2Tech context, aims at bridging experimental and computational characterization of pelletized metal hydrides for scalable hydrogen thermochemical compression. The experimental characterization will be carried out on rare-earth-free alloys embedded in binders capable of improving structural stability while enhancing heat transfer performance. A multiscale CFD model (from pellet- to vessel-scale) built on the OpenFOAM solver twoRegionHydrideFoam will be developed to address the thermal management bottlenecks limiting metal hydride compressor performance. The project builds upon and directly feeds the know-how of the Remedhys and HyCO2 EU projects
Giuseppe Sassone presented the work “CFD Investigation of Multiphase Flow and Oxygen Distribution in the Porous Transport Layer of PEM Electrolyzer“. CFD numerical simulations were performed in 3D and 2D geometries to assess the oxygen removal in the porous transport layer (PTL) and channel in the anode side of the PEM electrolyzer. Main highlights:
- Comparison between Eulerian and Volume-Of-Fluid methods to simulate the multiphase flow and bubble dynamics in the 2D simulations.
- Highlight on the impact of bubble dynamics and porous microstructure on PEM performance.
- Multiscale approach simulations to address full channel length in 3D simulations, as well as 2D simulations of a portion of channel to include a detailed PTL microstructure.
More about the event here: https://openfoamworkshop.org/event_agenda
