Effect of operating conditions of unmanned aerial vehicle powered by PEMFC on water and heat distributions of cell

ABSTRACT

The cell performance of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC)-driven unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) is affected by environmental changes during high-altitude flights. Therefore, the distribution of water and heat in a PEMFC was investigated. The result showed that the uniformity of temperature distribution on the membrane could be improved by increasing the air stoichiometry ratio, but the temperature difference on the membrane was still large and the minimum temperature difference was 14.6°C. When the temperature distribution is uniform, the temperature on the membrane is too low. Consequently, increasing the inlet temperature to 60°C, 70°C and 80°C resulted in inlet and outlet temperature differences of 3.5°C, 0.5°C and 2.7°C for the membrane respectively. By analyzing the distribution of the water content and temperature on the membranes, 70°C and 20 were considered to be the optimal inlet temperature and air stoichiometry, respectively. Under this condition, as the altitude increases, the temperature and water content on the membrane gradually decrease.

KEYWORDS:

• PEMFC
• air stoichiometry ratio
• inlet temperature
• distribution of temperature

Acknowledgements

This work was supported the National Key R&D program of China (2022YFB4003703). National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52076072, 51976055). The Science and Technology Innovation Program of Hunan Province (Grant No: 2020RC4040, 2021GK2017). Research Foundation of Education Bureau of Hunan Province (Grant No: 21A0396). Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program for College Students of Hunan Province (Grant No: S202310543037).

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Credit authorship contribution statement

Taiming Huang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Data curation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Supervision. Dingxun Yi: Methodology, Software, Investigation, Writing. Xun Ren: Software, Investigation. Jingmao Ma: Software, Investigation. Xi Chen: Software, Investigation. Changjie Ou: Software, Investigation. Yiyu Chen: Investigation. XiaoDong Wang: Investigation. Zhongmin Wan: Validation, Resources, Writing – review & editing.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China [2022YFB4003703]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 52076072, 51976055]; Research Foundation of Education Bureau of Hunan Province [Grant No: 21A0396]; Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program for College Students of Hunan Province [S202310543037]; Science and Technology Program of Hunan Province [Grant No: 2020RC4040, 2021GK2017].