An Experimental Study on the Natural Convection Heat Transfer of Air-cooling PEMFC in a Enclosure

Title & Authors
An Experimental Study on the Natural Convection Heat Transfer of Air-cooling PEMFC in a Enclosure
LEE, JUNSIK; KIM, SEUNGGON; SOHN, YOUNGJUN;

Abstract
This study presents an experiment investigation on natural convection heat transfer of air-cooling Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) in a enclosure system for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Considered are replacing fuel cell stack with Aluminum block for heat generating inside a enclosure chamber. The volume ratio of fuel cell stack and chamber for simulation to the actual size of aerial vehicle is 1 to 15. The parameters considered for experimental study are the environmental temperature range from $\small{25^{\circ}C}$ to $\small{-60^{\circ}C}$ and the block heat input of 10 W, 20 W and 30 W. Effect of the thermal conductivity of the block and power level on heat transfer in the chamber are investigated. Experimental results illustrate the temperature rise at various locations inside the chamber as dependent upon heat input of fuel cell stack and environmental temperature. From the results, dimensionless correlation in natural convection was proposed with Nusselt number and Rayleigh number for designing air-cooling PEMFC powered high altitude long endurance (HALE) UAV.
Keywords
Air-cooling;PEMFC;Natural convection;Nusselt number;Rayleigh number;UAV;
Language
Korean
Cited by
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