Advanced Thermal Management System for Heavy-Duty Hydrogen Fuel Cells Stacks

C56-18b-273169 The whole world is racing to achieve the net-zero carbon emissions target by 2050. This will be achieved by significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions until balancing the emissions and the removal amounts to keep global warming to no more than 1.5°C. Using green hydrogen (i.e., hydrogen created by renewable energy) as fuel for power generation is one of the main approaches to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Using hydrogen fuel cells has several significant benefits such as zero-emission power, robust reliability, improved efficiency, scalable, renewable, and readily available, much less noise, and fast charging time. However, its thermal management is a key bottleneck. The cell’s internal temperature can significantly affect the cell performance since various processes strongly depend on it such as the kinetics of the electrochemical reactions, the condensation and diffusion of water in the membrane, and the transmission of the reactant gas through the porous media. Therefore, an efficient thermal management system, that can remove the heat and minimize the temperature variation along the cell, is strongly needed which consequently would increase the reliability and efficiency of the stack. Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. (ACT), in collaboration with the University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine), proposes a passive two-phase cooling system for PEM fuel cell. The proposed system will be able to extract, transfer, and reject the waste heat generated by the fuel cells stack without moving parts and power input. The proposed thermal management system will increase the efficiency, durability, and reliability of the heavy-duty proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells stack. ACT will develop a bench-scale two-phase cooling system to demonstrate the heat transport and rejection ability of the system. A full three-dimensional (3D) fuel cell model, coupling with the proposed thermal management sub-model will be developed, to investigate the impact of thermal management on fuel cell performance and efficiency. The model will be validated against the experimental data from the literature and ACT’s bench testing results, in terms of I-V curve and temperature variation. Hydrogen fuel cells are considered an ideal power generation system in different applications such as heavy-duty trucks, regular cars, stationary generators, aircrafts, etc. This is due to their superior advantage of having zero emissions. The proposed thermal management system will increase the efficiency, durability, and reliability of the heavy-duty proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells stack. After the development and analysis of the bench-scale prototype and model in Phase I, the system will be further developed as a full-scale unit in Phase II. In addition, the Phase II program will focus on thermo-electrical performance optimization and cost-effective manufacturing methods.