Topology-optimized anode flow channels for proton exchange membrane electrolysis cells with receding-horizon model predictive control: a co-design framework for heat and mass transfer enhancement under renewable intermittency

Proton Exchange Membrane Electrolysis Cells (PEMECs) play a pivotal role in the production of green hydrogen but the existing anode flow channels have significant challenges with non-uniform water distribution, hot spots and high-pressure drop, especially when the renewable energy supply is variable. In this paper, an integrated structural and operational co-design framework is proposed, which combines a SIMP-based topology optimization formulation for the anode flow channel with a Receding-Horizon Model Predictive Controller (RH-MPC) for the inlet velocity, operating pressure and thermal boundary condition. A density-based porous-medium formulation is coupled to a pseudo 2D reduced-order model based on a layered thermal resistance network to get a computationally efficient topology generation and a discrete adjoint sensitivity analysis driven by automatic differentiation to compute gradients of a dual objective cost function. Under different filter radii, pressure limits and operating voltages, five topologies are generated, which develop into a hierarchical network of leaf-vein-shaped branches that enhance reactant redistribution and prevent accumulation of local oxygen. Reconstructed 3D simulations reveal that the optimized channel achieves superior thermal-hydraulic performance compared to baseline channel designs of serpentine, parallel and interdigitated. When U = 1.65 V, the cell temperature is decreased to 354.2 K, the water saturation uniformity index is decreased to U I = 0.941, the temperature uniformity index is decreased to T I = 0.923, and the pressure drop is limited to 1476 Pa, representing the relative improvements of 42.4%, 28.2%, 30.9%, and 19.5% over the serpentine baseline. The MPC layer further decreases the settling time for a 30% step-change to renewable energy from 3.2 s to 2.1 s. The results show the ability of the proposed TOPOMPC-PEMEC framework for compact and intermittency-resilient green hydrogen production.