Thermal analysis and management of proton exchange membrane fuel cell stacks for automotive vehicle

The thermal management of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is crucial for fuel cell vehicles. This paper presents a new simulation model for the water-cooled PEMFC stacks for automotive vehicles and cooling systems. The cooling system model considers both the cooling of the stack and cooling of the compressed air through the intercooler. Theoretical analysis was carried out to calculate the heat dissipation requirements for the cooling system. The case study results show that more than 99.0% of heat dissipation requirement is for thermal management of the PEMFC stack; more than 98.5% of cooling water will be distributed to the stack cooling loop. It is also demonstrated that controlling cooling water flow rate and stack inlet cooling water temperature could effectively satisfy thermal management constraints. These thermal management constraints are differences in stack inlet and outlet cooling water temperature, stack temperature, fan power consumption, and pump power consumption.     

Analysis of the water and thermal management in proton exchange membrane fuel cell systems

Water and thermal management is essential to the performance of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell system. The key components in water and thermal management system, namely the fuel cell stack, radiator, condenser and membrane humidifier are all modeled analytically in this paper. Combined with a steady-state, one-dimensional, isothermal fuel cell model, a simple channel-groove pressure drop model is included in the stack analysis. Two compact heat exchangers, radiator and condenser are sized and rated to maintain the heat and material balance. The influence of non-condensable gas is also considered in the calculation of the condenser. Based on the proposed methodology, the effects of two important operating parameters, namely the air stoichiometric ratio and the cathode outlet pressure, and three kinds of anode humidification, namely recycling humidification, membrane humidification and recycling combining membrane humidification are analyzed. The methodology in this article is helpful to the design of water and thermal management system in fuel cell systems.     

Innovative cathode flow-field design for passive air-cooled polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell stacks

A novel cathode flow-field design suitable for a passive air-cooled polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell stack is proposed to enhance the water-retaining capability under excess dry air supply conditions. The innovative cathode flow-field is designed to supply more air to the cooling channels and further enables deceleration of the reactant air in the gas channels and acceleration of the coolant air in the cooling channels simultaneously along the air flow path. Therefore, the design facilitates the waste heat removal through the cooling channels while the water removal by the reactant air is minimized. The conceptual cathode flow-field design is validated using a three-dimensional PEM fuel cell model. The detailed simulation results clearly demonstrate that the new cathode flow-field design exhibits superior water-retaining capability compared with a conventional cathode flow-field design (parallel flow channel configuration) under typical air-cooled fuel cell operating conditions. This study provides a new strategy to design cathode flow-fields to alleviate notorious membrane dehydration and unstable performance issues in a passive air-cooled PEM fuel cell stack.     

A single-phase, non-isothermal model for PEM fuel cells

A proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell produces a similar amount of waste heat to its electric power output, and tolerates a small temperature deviation from its design point for best performance and durability. These stringent thermal requirements present a significant heat transfer problem. In this work, a three-dimensional, non-isothermal model is developed to account rigorously for various heat generation mechanisms, including irreversible heat due to electrochemical reactions, entropic heat, and Joule heating arising from the electrolyte ionic resistance. The thermal model is further coupled with the electrochemical and mass transport models, thus permitting a comprehensive study of thermal and water management in PEM fuel cells. Numerical simulations reveal that the thermal effect on PEM fuel cells becomes more critical at higher current density and/or lower gas diffusion layer thermal conductivity. This three-dimensional model for single cells forms a theoretical foundation for thermal analysis of multi-cell stacks where thermal management and stack cooling is a significant engineering challenge.     

Design of an air humidifier for a 5 kW proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack operated at elevated temperatures

Air humidification is a crucial issue for superior performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEM fuel cell) stacks. In this work, an air humidifier is proposed for a 5 kW PEM fuel cell stack working at elevated temperatures, e.g., 90–95 °C. The high temperature coolant exiting the stack is utilized to pre-heat the air in the heat exchanging tubes of the humidifier, and the heated air is humidified with deionized water supplied by a nozzle fixed in a top cavity. Both the tubes and the nozzle are properly designed to ensure sufficient heat transfer and superior atomization. Humidification performance is evaluated under different operation conditions. The nozzle is able to inject well-atomized water with uniform droplet diameter. With the variation of inlet air flow rate, the relative humidity (RH) of the outlet air increases at the beginning, then decreases gradually due to the attenuation of dew point (DP) temperature. However, the humidification performance can be improved when higher temperature deionized water is injected or high temperature coolant is supplied. At a coolant temperature of 95 °C, the outlet air DP temperature is maintained over 80 °C with 25 °C injection water. Moreover, better humidification performance is achieved when the injection water flow rate is controlled according to the working conditions of the stack.     

Liquid water transport in straight micro-parallel-channels with manifolds for PEM fuel cell cathode

Water management in a proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell stack has been a challenging issue on the road to commercialization. This paper presents a numerical investigation of air–water flow in micro-parallel-channels with PEM fuel cell stack inlet and outlet manifolds for the cathode, using a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software package FLUENT. Different air–water flow behaviours inside the straight micro-parallel-channels with inlet and outlet manifolds were simulated and discussed. The results showed that excessive and unevenly distributed water in different single PEM fuel cells could cause blockage of airflow or uneven distribution of air along the different flow channels. It is found that for a design with straight-channels, water in the outflow manifold could be easily blocked by air/water streams from the gas flow channels; the airflow could be severely blocked even if there was only a small amount of water in the gas flow channels. Some important suggestions were made to achieve a better design.     

Modelling and evaluation of heating strategies for high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell stacks

Experiments were conducted on two different cathode air cooled high temperature PEM (HTPEM) fuel cell stacks; a 30 cell 400 W prototype stack using two bipolar plates per cell, and a 65 cell 1 kW commercial stack using one bipolar plate per cell. The work seeks to examine the use of different heating strategies and find a strategy suited for fast start-up of the HTPEM fuel cell stacks. Fast start-up of these high temperature systems enables use in a wide range of applications, such as automotive and auxiliary power units, where immediate system response is needed. The development of a dynamic model to simulate the temperature development of a fuel cell stack during heating can be used for assistance in system and control design. The heating strategies analyzed and tested reduced the start-up time of one of the fuel cell stacks from 1 h to about 6 min.     

Thermal modeling and temperature control of a PEM fuel cell system for forklift applications

Temperature changes in PEM fuel cell stacks are considerably higher during load variations and have a negative impact as they generate thermal stresses and stack degradation. Cell hydration is also of vital importance in fuel cells and it is strongly dependent on operating temperature. A combination of high temperature and reduced humidity increases the degradation rate. Stack thermal management and control are, thus, crucial issues in PEM fuel cell systems especially in automotive applications such as forklifts.     

A diagnosis method for identification of the defected cell(s) in the PEM fuel cells

Incorrect controlling of the pressure, temperature, flow rate and humidity levels of reactant gases can inflict severe and sometimes irreversible damages on the PEM fuel cells. Most important damage is leakage between the two sides of cathode and anode that may lead to physical defects in the stack. Usage of neutral gas method only reveals the overall leakage and does not show the exact location of the defected cell in the stack. This research seeks to determine the exact location of the defective cell using a method that is based on the data received from the voltage–time graphs of the stack under hydrogen sudden stop condition when the stacks are operating in the open circuit voltage condition. This method has been used with respect to two fuel cell stacks with different powers in different working conditions. Also the stack voltage drop due to leakage has been considered theoretically.     

Modelling of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell stacks based on a hydraulic network approach

Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells convert the chemical energy of hydrogen and oxygen directly into electrical energy. Waste heat and water are the reaction by‐products, making PEM fuel cells a promising zero‐emission power source for transportation and stationary co‐generation applications. In this study, a mathematical model of a PEM fuel cell stack is formulated. The distributions of the pressure and mass flow rate for the fuel and oxidant streams in the stack are determined with a hydraulic network analysis. Using these distributions as operating conditions, the performance of each cell in the stack is determined with a mathematical, single cell model that has been developed previously. The stack model has been applied to PEM fuel cell stacks with two common stack configurations: the U and Z stack design. The former is designed such that the reactant streams enter and exit the stack on the same end, while the latter has reactant streams entering and exiting on opposite ends. The stack analysed consists of 50 individual active cells with fully humidified H₂ or reformate as fuel and humidified O₂ or air as the oxidant. It is found that the average voltage of the cells in the stack is lower than the voltage of the cell operating individually, and this difference in the cell performance is significantly larger for reformate/air reactants when compared to the H₂/O₂ reactants. It is observed that the performance degradation for cells operating within a stack results from the unequal distribution of reactant mass flow among the cells in the stack. It is shown that strategies for performance improvement rely on obtaining a uniform reactant distribution within the stack, and include increasing stack manifold size, decreasing the number of gas flow channels per bipolar plate, and judicially varying the resistance to mass flow in the gas flow channels from cell to cell. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effect of La oxide additive on the solubility of NiO in molten carbonates

A comprehensive analysis on a novel energy recovery system for reformate-based proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell systems is presented. The energy recovery system includes a throttling valve, a heat exchanger, a compressor, and is coupled with a coolant loop for the fuel cell stack. The feed stock of the fuel reformer, which is primarily a mixture of water and fuel, is vaporized in the heat exchanger and is then compressed to a sufficiently high pressure before it is ducted into the fuel reformer. The analysis includes the throttling of two-phase fuel/water mixture and vaporization in the heat exchanger to obtain the temperature and pressure of the mixture at the inlet of the compressor. The results indicate that the power plant efficiency with the energy recovery system can be increased by more than 20% compared to that of a fuel cell power plant without the energy recovery system. Additionally, more than 25% of the waste heat generated by the fuel cell stack can be removed due to the energy recovery system, and the fuel burned for the fuel reforming purpose is reduced by more than 70%.     

Modeling and simulation of a PEM fuel cell stack considering temperature effects

Management of the water and heat ejected as byproducts in an operating PEM fuel cell stack are crucial factors in their optimal design and safe operations. Models currently available for a PEM fuel cell are based on either empirical or 3-D computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Both models do not fully meet the need to represent physical behavior of a stack because of either their simplicity or complexity. We propose a highly dynamic PEM fuel cell stack model, taking into account the most influential property of temperature affecting performance and dynamics. Simulations have been conducted to analyze start-up behaviors and the performance of the stack in conjunction with the cells. Our analyses demonstrate static and dynamic behaviors of a stack. Major results presented are as follows: (1) operating dependent temperature gradient across through-plane direction of the fuel cell stack, (2) endplate effects on the temperature profile during start-up process, (3) temperature profile influences on the output voltage of individual cells and the stack, (4) temperature influence on the water content in membranes of different cells, and (5) cathode inlet relative humidity influence on the temperature profile of the stack.     

Maintaining desired level of relative humidity throughout a fuel cell with spatially variable heat removal rates

A concept of using the product water to internally humidify the air stream in a PEM fuel cell without external humidification is investigated by a simple, pseudo 2-D model along a single channel. This model takes into account the mass and energy balance, water and heat generation rates, heat removal, and water transport through the membrane. The model and thus the concept were confirmed experimentally using a 5-segment fuel cell. The temperature of each segment could be individually controlled, and the temperature and humidity of air could be measured between each segment. A temperature profile has been established, by applying spatially variable heat removal rates along the cathode channel, that results in relative humidity being close to 100% throughout the cell without any external humidification. The concept may be applied to a fuel cell stack resulting in simplification of the suporting system by avoiding external humidification.     

Parametric analysis of a hybrid power system using organic Rankine cycle to recover waste heat from proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Using fuel cell systems for distributed generation (DG) applications represents a meaningful candidate to conventional plants due to their high power density and the heat recovery potential during the electrochemical reaction. A hybrid power system consisting of a proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell stack and an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) is proposed to utilize the waste heat generated from PEM fuel cell. The system performance is evaluated by the steady-state mathematical models and thermodynamic laws. Meanwhile, a parametric analysis is also carried out to investigate the effects of some key parameters on the system performance, including the fuel flow rate, PEM fuel cell operating pressure, turbine inlet pressure and turbine backpressure. Results show that the electrical efficiency of the hybrid system combined by PEM fuel cell stack and ORC can be improved by about 5% compared to that of the single PEM fuel cell stack without ORC, and it is also indicated that the high fuel flow rate can reduce the PEM fuel cell electrical efficiency and overall electrical efficiency. Moreover, with an increased fuel cell operating pressure, both PEM fuel cell electrical efficiency and overall electrical efficiency firstly increase, and then decrease. Turbine inlet pressure and backpressure also have effects on the performance of the hybrid power system.     

An application of indirect model reference adaptive control to a low-power proton exchange membrane fuel cell

Nonlinearity and the time-varying dynamics of fuel cell systems make it complex to design a controller for improving output performance. This paper introduces an application of a model reference adaptive control to a low-power proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell system, which consists of three main components: a fuel cell stack, an air pump to supply air, and a solenoid valve to adjust hydrogen flow. From the system perspective, the dynamic model of the PEM fuel cell stack can be expressed as a multivariable configuration of two inputs, hydrogen and air-flow rates, and two outputs, cell voltage and current. The corresponding transfer functions can be identified off-line to describe the linearized dynamics with a finite order at a certain operating point, and are written in a discrete-time auto-regressive moving-average model for on-line estimation of parameters. This provides a strategy of regulating the voltage and current of the fuel cell by adaptively adjusting the flow rates of air and hydrogen. Experiments show that the proposed adaptive controller is robust to the variation of fuel cell system dynamics and power request. Additionally, it helps decrease fuel consumption and relieves the DC/DC converter in regulating the fluctuating cell voltage.     

Model predictive control of water management in PEMFC

Water management is critical for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC). An appropriate humidity condition not only can improve the performances and efficiency of the fuel cell, but can also prevent irreversible degradation of internal composition such as the catalyst or the membrane. In this paper we built the model of water management systems which consist of stack voltage model, water balance equation in anode and cathode, and water transport process in membrane. Based on this model, model predictive control mechanism was proposed by utilizing Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) optimization. The models and model predictive controller have been implemented in the MATLAB and SIMULINK environment. Simulation results showed that this approach can avoid fluctuation of water concentration in cathode and can extend the lifetime of PEM fuel cell stack.     

Dynamic fuel cell models and their application in hardware in the loop simulation

Currently, fuel cell technology plays an important role in the development of alternative energy converters for mobile, portable and stationary applications. With the help of physical based models of fuel cell systems and appropriate test benches it is possible to design different applications and investigate their stationary and dynamic behaviour. The polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell system model includes gas humidifier, air and hydrogen supply, current converter and a detailed stack model incorporating the physical characteristics of the different layers. In particular, the use of these models together with hardware in the loop (HIL) capable test stands helps to decrease the costs and accelerate the development of fuel cell systems. The interface program provides fast data exchange between the test bench and the physical model of the fuel cell or any other systems in real time. So the flexibility and efficiency of the test bench increase fundamentally, because it is possible to replace real components with their mathematical models.     

Performance of PEMFC stack using expanded graphite bipolar plates

The bipolar plates are in weight and volume the major part of PEM fuel cell stack, and also a significant effect to the stack cost. To develop the low-cost and low-weight bipolar plate for PEM fuel cell, we have developed a kind of cheap expanded graphite plate material and a production process for fuel cell bipolar plates. The plates have a high electric conductivity and low density, and can be stamped directly forming fuel cell bipolar plates. Then, 1 and 10 kW stacks using expanded graphite bipolar plates are successfully assembled. The contact resistance of the bipolar plate is investigated and the electrochemical performances of the fuel cell stacks are tested. Good fuel cell performance is obtained and the voltage distribution among every single cell in the stacks is very uniform.     

Integration of Heat Pipe into Fuel Cell Technology

This paper describes recent applications of heat pipe technology in fuel cell systems, which include new stack designs with heat pipes to improve heat transfer as well as work on fuel cell system level design and engineering with adopting the heat pipe concept. In one design, micro-heat pipes are inserted and bonded in bipolar plates for thermal control in the fuel cell stack. In another design, flat heat pipes are integrated with a carbon bipolar plate for improving thermal control in the fuel cell stack. Finally, based on the heat pipe concept, we specifically developed a series of direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) systems characterized as passive technology for methanol fuel delivery, water recirculation, and air and thermal management. Long-term durability and stability of the passive DMFC systems have been proved experimentally.