Cargando…

Synergies of fuel cell system thermal management and cryogenic hydrogen exergy utilization

Low-temperature polymer electrolyte fuel cell systems (FCSs) need to reject large amounts of low temperature heat. Often a mobile FCS’s cooling capacity limits the FCS power output. Cryogenic hydrogen is typically utilized as a direct heat sink using heat exchangers (HXs), even though HXs destroy mo...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lenger, Magnus, Heinke, Steffen, Tegethoff, Wilhelm, Köhler, Jürgen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9772419/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36543835
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26561-9
_version_ 1784854971119828992
author Lenger, Magnus
Heinke, Steffen
Tegethoff, Wilhelm
Köhler, Jürgen
author_facet Lenger, Magnus
Heinke, Steffen
Tegethoff, Wilhelm
Köhler, Jürgen
author_sort Lenger, Magnus
collection PubMed
description Low-temperature polymer electrolyte fuel cell systems (FCSs) need to reject large amounts of low temperature heat. Often a mobile FCS’s cooling capacity limits the FCS power output. Cryogenic hydrogen is typically utilized as a direct heat sink using heat exchangers (HXs), even though HXs destroy most hydrogen exergy. This paper investigates synergies between FCS thermal management and cryogenic hydrogen exergy utilization in terms of their benchmark performance: the FCS coolant circuit supplies heat at coolant temperature level to a so named reversible cryogenic exergy utilization system (rCEUS) comprised of thermodynamically ideal heat engine processes. The rCEUS converts this heat partly to electrical energy (the value of which equals the hydrogen exergy) and rejects remaining heat to hydrogen to heat it to coolant temperature. The rCEUS output power is used to support the FCS, so the FCS rejects less heat and a significant fraction of this heat is utilized by the rCEUS. As a result, significantly less heat has to be transferred to ambient and the fuel demand decreases. In this paper, three hydrogen storage options are compared: liquid hydrogen, subcooled liquid hydrogen and cryo-compressed hydrogen. Different para- and orthohydrogen compositions are evaluated. For typical FCS operating points, rejected FCS heat to ambient is reducible by 40–67%. FCS power demand is reducible by 14–31%. FCS rejected heat to ambient reduction is 4.5–8 times larger than that of conventional HXs. Calculations are based on hydrogen’s lower heating value.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-9772419
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2022
publisher Nature Publishing Group UK
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-97724192022-12-23 Synergies of fuel cell system thermal management and cryogenic hydrogen exergy utilization Lenger, Magnus Heinke, Steffen Tegethoff, Wilhelm Köhler, Jürgen Sci Rep Article Low-temperature polymer electrolyte fuel cell systems (FCSs) need to reject large amounts of low temperature heat. Often a mobile FCS’s cooling capacity limits the FCS power output. Cryogenic hydrogen is typically utilized as a direct heat sink using heat exchangers (HXs), even though HXs destroy most hydrogen exergy. This paper investigates synergies between FCS thermal management and cryogenic hydrogen exergy utilization in terms of their benchmark performance: the FCS coolant circuit supplies heat at coolant temperature level to a so named reversible cryogenic exergy utilization system (rCEUS) comprised of thermodynamically ideal heat engine processes. The rCEUS converts this heat partly to electrical energy (the value of which equals the hydrogen exergy) and rejects remaining heat to hydrogen to heat it to coolant temperature. The rCEUS output power is used to support the FCS, so the FCS rejects less heat and a significant fraction of this heat is utilized by the rCEUS. As a result, significantly less heat has to be transferred to ambient and the fuel demand decreases. In this paper, three hydrogen storage options are compared: liquid hydrogen, subcooled liquid hydrogen and cryo-compressed hydrogen. Different para- and orthohydrogen compositions are evaluated. For typical FCS operating points, rejected FCS heat to ambient is reducible by 40–67%. FCS power demand is reducible by 14–31%. FCS rejected heat to ambient reduction is 4.5–8 times larger than that of conventional HXs. Calculations are based on hydrogen’s lower heating value. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-12-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9772419/ /pubmed/36543835 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26561-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Lenger, Magnus
Heinke, Steffen
Tegethoff, Wilhelm
Köhler, Jürgen
Synergies of fuel cell system thermal management and cryogenic hydrogen exergy utilization
title Synergies of fuel cell system thermal management and cryogenic hydrogen exergy utilization
title_full Synergies of fuel cell system thermal management and cryogenic hydrogen exergy utilization
title_fullStr Synergies of fuel cell system thermal management and cryogenic hydrogen exergy utilization
title_full_unstemmed Synergies of fuel cell system thermal management and cryogenic hydrogen exergy utilization
title_short Synergies of fuel cell system thermal management and cryogenic hydrogen exergy utilization
title_sort synergies of fuel cell system thermal management and cryogenic hydrogen exergy utilization
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9772419/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36543835
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26561-9
work_keys_str_mv AT lengermagnus synergiesoffuelcellsystemthermalmanagementandcryogenichydrogenexergyutilization
AT heinkesteffen synergiesoffuelcellsystemthermalmanagementandcryogenichydrogenexergyutilization
AT tegethoffwilhelm synergiesoffuelcellsystemthermalmanagementandcryogenichydrogenexergyutilization
AT kohlerjurgen synergiesoffuelcellsystemthermalmanagementandcryogenichydrogenexergyutilization