Cooling Design for PEM Fuel-Cell Stacks Employing Air and Metal Foam: Simulation and Experiment

Parametric Study on Thermo-Hydraulic Performance of NACA Airfoil Fin PCHEs Channels

In this work, a discontinuous airfoil fin printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) was used as a recuperator in a micro gas turbine system. The effects of the airfoil fin geometry parameters (arc height, maximum arc height position, and airfoil thickness) and the airfoil fin arrangements (horizontal and vertical spacings) on the PCHE channel’s thermo-hydraulic performance were extensively examined by a numerical parametric study. The flow features, local heat transfer coefficient, and wall shear stress were examined in detail to obtain an enhanced heat transfer mechanism for a better PCHE design. The results show that the heat transfer and flow resistance were mainly increased at the airfoil leading edge owing to a flow jet, whereas the airfoil trailing edge had little effect on the thermo-hydraulic performance. The airfoil thickness was the most significant while the arc height and the vertical spacing were moderately significant to the performance. Moreover, only the airfoil thickness had a significant effect on the PCHE compactness. Based on a comprehensive investigation, two solutions NACA-6230 and -3220 were selected owing to their better thermal performance and smaller pressure drop, respectively, with horizontal spacings of 2 mm and vertical spacings of 2 or 3 mm.

Thermoelectric Generator as the Waste Heat Recovery Unit of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell: A Numerical Study

The proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is a prominent environmentally friendly alternative candidate to internal combustion engines in automotive applications. The recovery of the waste heat of light-duty diesel engines has been investigated recently, which is similarly relevant for PEMFCs. Thermoelectric generators (TEG) applied on the stack’s walls have been already proposed and tested as a cooling method for small scale applications of the PEMFC. For the medium scale usages of the PEMFC stack, TEG technology may be further used to recover heat lost through the cooling water required for stack thermal management, which was the focus of the present study. Using an agglomerate model for the PEMFC and a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) thermal model for the TEG heat exchanger unit, the operation and performance of the PEMFC stack and heat recovery unit were simulated, respectively. After validation, results indicated that the transferred heat from the PEMFC to the cooling channel increased the temperature of the coolant from room temperature to 330.5 K at the current density of 0.8 A/cm2. CFD analysis revealed that 37.7 W of the heated wasted by the PEMFC stack could be recovered by the currently available TEG material and geometry.