Experimental analysis of dynamic performance of air‐cooled PEMFC stack integrated ultrathin vapor chambers under New European Driving Cycle

Abstract

Ultrathin vapor chamber (UVC) is very suitable for the thermal management of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) stack due to the simple structure, high heat conduction, and excellent temperature uniformity. For exploring the application of UVC on the thermal management of the PEMFC stack, a contrast experiment is performed between two PEMFC stacks (one named conventional PEMFC stack and the other named UVC-PEMFC stack) under the New European Driving Cycle mode with different purge periods. Experimental results show that UVC can significantly improve thermal management. It mainly behaves in two aspects: (a) UVC can effectively remove the waste heat. Under 60% load, the removed waste heat reaches 10.52% of Qgen, which generates a temperature difference of 12.5% between the two stacks. The maximum temperature is decreased from 58°C to 42.5°C under 0.645 A/cm2 and (b) UVC can also obviously improve the temperature uniformity. Under full load, the temperature uniformity of the UVC-PEMFC stack is 3.25 times lower than the conventional stack. The maximum temperature is decreased from 22°C to 3°C. The suitable working temperature and excellent temperature uniformity generate high efficiency, resulting in higher output power. For example, the output power of the UVC-PEMFC stack is 12.8% higher than the conventional PEMFC stack under 60% load. Unexpectedly, the long purge interval will reduce the dynamic response of the UVC-PEMFC stack under high current density. This investigation tries to provide an implication for a potential application of UVC on air-cooling PEMFC stack without changing its concise system.