Hydrogen fuel cells are a key technology in the transition toward carbon-neutral energy systems, offering clean power with water as the only byproduct. Microfluidic fuel cells, which operate at the microliter scale, are an emerging variant that offer fine control over fluid and thermal dynamics, along with compact, efficient designs. However, scaling these systems to meet practical power demands remains a major challenge -- particularly due to the limitations of conventional simulation methods like Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), which are computationally expensive and scale poorly. In this work, we propose a reduced-order simulation method that models the behavior of individual microfluidic fuel cells and efficiently extends it to large scale stacks. This approach significantly reduces simulation time while maintaining close agreement with detailed CFD results. The method is validated, evaluated for scalability, and discussed in the context of ongoing advancements in microfluidic fuel cell fabrication. The obtained results demonstrate that this abstraction can support the design and development of scalable microfluidic fuel cell systems and, for the first time, the consideration of first macroscale instances of practical value.

翻译：氢燃料电池是实现碳中和能源系统的关键技术，它以清洁电力供应且仅产生水作为副产物。微流控燃料电池作为新兴变体，在微升级别运行，可精细控制流体与热动力学特性，同时具备紧凑高效的架构设计。然而，将这类系统扩展至满足实际电力需求仍面临重大挑战——尤其是传统计算方法如计算流体动力学（CFD）的局限性，其计算成本高昂且可扩展性差。本研究提出一种降阶模拟方法，既能建模单个微流控燃料电池的行为，又能高效扩展至大规模堆叠结构。该方法在保持与详尽CFD结果高度一致的同时，显著缩短了模拟时间。我们对该方法进行了验证、可扩展性评估，并结合微流控燃料电池制造技术的持续进展展开讨论。结果表明，这种抽象模型可支撑可扩展微流控燃料电池系统的设计与开发，并首次使具有实际价值的宏观尺度案例成为可能。