Thermal analysis and optimization of a portable, edge-air-cooled PEFC stack

Computational Study of Thermal, Water and Gas Management in PEM Fuel Cell Stacks

“…The computed limiting current density for each case is found to be similar to that found in published experimental investigation: liquid cooling up to 15000 A m⁻² (Noponen et al, 2004), air-cooling up to 8000 A m⁻² (Shimpalee et al, 2009), edge-cooling up to 8500 A m⁻² (Fluckiger et al, 2007), and forced and natural convection with open-cathode up to 3500 A m⁻² (Wu et al, 2009) and 1500 A m⁻² (Urbani et al, 2007), respectively. Conversely, when the complexity, cost, size, weight, and parasitic load are of interest, the order is reversed; for example, stack with liquid cooling requires a coolant loop, a radiator, a pump, more space and weight as well as additional costs to build the supporting equipment.…”

Review on management, mechanisms and modelling of thermal processes in PEMFC

“…Graphite based materials are commonly used because of their high thermal conductivity coefficient and low density. Pyrolytic Graphite Sheets (PGSs) provide an innovative, feasible and economic means of thermally managing fuel cell systems [79][80][81]. The use of high performance heat spreaders ensures that as little weight and volume as possible is added to the stack and improves the system reliability in comparison with conventional liquid cooling [25].…”

Metal foam heat exchangers for thermal management of fuel cell systems

“…Use of either water or air as the coolant through a multi-channel heat exchanger is the current practice in fuel cell industry to remove the heat, released by each single cell, and provide a constant operational temperature [3,9,15,16]. Water-cooled heat exchangers, requiring an extra cooling loop for water (radiator), use water as the coolant and remove heat from graphite plates (Figure 1).…”

“…Air-cooled fuel cells, on the other hand, use the ambient air as the coolant. They can be best described by the above two figures with the only difference that in most cases the air flow channels are vertical [4,7,9,23,24]. They do not have the aforementioned drawbacks associated with the wet cooling systems.…”

“…They can be commercialized when significant technical challenges are addressed; among them, the proper thermal management is one of the critical issues which needs to be resolved [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. A fuel cell stack is composed of a number of cells where in each cell the same temperature must be maintained throughout the cell in order to prevent destruction of the cell through thermal loading.…”