Inverse problems for quasi-linear elliptic systems modeling electrolysers

Abstract

We investigate the electrochemical processes within an electrolyser cell, which are modelled by a coupled system of second-order quasi-linear elliptic PDEs. In this context, we study an inverse problem aiming to reconstruct both the non-linear diffusion coefficients and the phenomenological relation defining the electric potential. Our main results state that boundary measurements alone are not enough to reconstruct these non-linear quantities. However, we show that a combination of boundary and interior measurements allow for their unique reconstruction. To achieve this result we generalise a linearisation result in the context of the scalar quasi-linear Calder\'{o}n problem, [Sun, Math. Z. 221 (1996)], to the setting of a system of PDEs with non-local nonlinearities. In contrast to the Calder\'{o}n case, the generalised linearisation does not "freeze" the coefficients. We show that interior measurements are precisely what is required to achieve this freezing and thus enable the unique reconstruction.