The use of phase-change cooling strategy in proton exchange membrane fuel cells: A numerical study

Thermal management is considered a critical issue in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), since it not only influences the cell performance but also impacts PEMFC’s reliability and durability. With the ever-increasing power density of PEMFC, traditional cooling approaches including air cool...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science China. Technological sciences 2021-12, Vol.64 (12), p.2762-2770
Main Authors: Yan, XiaoHui, Peng, YiMeng, Shen, YuanTing, Shen, ShuiYun, Wei, GuangHua, Yin, JieWei, Zhang, JunLiang
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air cooling
Coolants
Engineering
Fuel cells
Liquid cooling
Operating temperature
Performance evaluation
Phase change
Proton exchange membrane fuel cells
Protons
Temperature gradients
Thermal management
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Summary:Thermal management is considered a critical issue in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), since it not only influences the cell performance but also impacts PEMFC’s reliability and durability. With the ever-increasing power density of PEMFC, traditional cooling approaches including air cooling and water cooling become difficult to meet the demand for high-power heat dissipation. Therefore, phase-change cooling is proposed for fuel cell application in this work, and the potential advantages are discussed and demonstrated via a mathematical model incorporating phase-change heat transfer. The thermal management performance is evaluated by temperature uniformity, maximum temperature difference, and the cooling capacity to compare the difference between phase-change cooling and traditional methods, which demonstrates that phase-change cooling owns a greatly improved thermal management performance. In addition, a simple method to broaden the operating temperature of phase-change cooling based on one certain coolant is offered, which is pressurizing in the coolant channel to regulate the boiling temperature that could further improve the application feasibility of phase-change cooling strategy in fuel cells.
ISSN:1674-7321
1869-1900
DOI:10.1007/s11431-021-1889-4