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Investigation on Cold Start for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Stack
Technical Paper
2021-01-0738
ISSN: 0148-7191, e-ISSN: 2688-3627
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SAE WCX Digital Summit
Language:
English
Abstract
Cold start remains a major obstacle to the commercialization of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), however, there are few studies on the cold start characteristics, especially at a complicated stack level. In this study, a novel layer-lumped numerical model with higher computational efficiency is proposed to investigate the cold start behavior of PEMFC stack, in which phase transition, heat transfer and electrochemical reaction are comprehensively considered. Besides, phase transition mechanisms are reconstructed based on the assumption that super-cooled water exists within the cell. With this model, the inconsistency of the stack temperature distribution and output performance is presented, some constant loading voltage strategies are investigated, and a linear variable controlling voltage strategy is developed. The results show that the inconsistency gets more distinct as the amount of the cells increases when the number of cells is below 30, while the temperature inconsistency keeps almost steady when the number of cells is over 30. The inconsistency of the temperature and output performance mainly occurs to several cells at the edge of the stack. Reducing the loading voltage benefits to the cold start process, but the controlling voltage should not be too low for preventing the failure of cold start in advance. The linear variable voltage strategies, which change the loading voltage from 3V to 5V in 20s, 30s under the stack cold start loading process, are better than the constant voltage (3V, 5V) strategies. The simulation results for the PEMFC stack in this paper are helpful for the optimization of the cold start performance.
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Citation
Fu, J., Liu, X., and Xu, S., "Investigation on Cold Start for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell Stack," SAE Technical Paper 2021-01-0738, 2021, https://doi.org/10.4271/2021-01-0738.Data Sets - Support Documents
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