Development of multi-disciplinary simulation tools for electrochemical systems

Recent advances in computational simulation tools have enabled multidisciplinary modeling of complex electrochemical systems. Most electrochemical systems involve fluid flow, heat/mass transfer, gas/surface chemistry, transport of charged species, electric and electromagnetic fields and phenomena such as ionization, recombination, etc. The analysis and optimization of such systems requires simultaneous consideration of all of the above phenomena. Traditionally, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models have been successful in solving flow, heat/mass transfer and simple chemical reactions in geometrically complex systems. However, CFD models have not dealt with transport of charged species and electromagnetic fields in a robust manner. This article describes a computational code that has been specifically designed to treat complex multi-disciplinary phenomena in engineering systems. This code has been used to simulate interactions between fluidic-thermal-chemical-mechanical-electromagnetic phenomena for many industrial applications. This paper describes modeling studies relevant to electrochemical applications such as low-pressure nonequilibrium plasmas, electroplating processes and electrophoresis for fluid separation. These processes have important applications in the chemical/biological area and serve as useful examples for demonstrating the strengths of the multi-disciplinary software.