Novel fuel cell stack with coupled metal hydride containers

Air-cooled, self-humidifying hydrogen fuel cells are often used for backup and portable power sources, with a metal hydride used as the hydrogen storage material. To provide a stable hydrogen flow to the fuel cell stack, heat must be provided to the metal hydride. Conventionally, the heat released from the exothermic reaction of hydrogen and oxygen in the fuel cell stack to the exhaust air is used to heat a separate metal hydride container. In this case, the heat is only partially used instead of being more closely coupled because of the heat transfer resistances in the system. To achieve better heat integration, a novel scheme is proposed whereby hydrogen storage and single fuel cells are more closely coupled. Based on this idea, metal hydride containers in the form of cooling plates were assembled between each pair of cells in the stack so that the heat could be directly transferred to a metal hydride container of much larger surface-to-volume ratio than conventional separate containers. A heat coupled fuel cell portable power source with 10 cells and 11 metal hydride containers was constructed and the experimental results show that this scheme is beneficial for the heat management of fuel cell stack. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.