Nanofibrous electrocatalyst including nanofibrous continuous network of graphitic nanofibers having embedded catalytically active metal moieties

Abstract

Present study demonstrates a waste heat recovery from the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) using thermally coupled thermoelectric generator (TEG) and metal hydride (MH) cylinder. In TEG system, cooling of cold side is very crucial that significantly affects its power output. Therefore, a strategy is proposed in which PEMFC, TEG and MH are thermally coupled for efficient waste heat recovery from the PEMFC. A mathematical model is developed for the theoretical prediction of the dynamic performance of the proposed system. The proposed strategy is compared with different cases of cold side cooling of TEG such as: 1. natural cooling 2. fan cooling. An experimental study is performed with1 kW PEMFC and 5000 L MH cylinder. An air duct is designed to extract the heat loss from the PEMFC which is utilized at the hot side of TEG while cold side is mounted on MH cylinder. Results show that PEMFC heat loss increases with increase in the operationg load, therefore TEG power output also increases. Maximum temperature difference ≈3.2 °C is achieved between hot and cold sides of TEG. It is observed that TEG modules coupled with MH can be an efficient strategy for waste heat recovery from the PEMFC.