Experimental study of a passive thermal management system using vapor chamber for proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack

摘要

To mitigate the parasitic power consumption caused by conventional air and water cooling, this study proposes a novel passive cooling scheme that integrates vapor chambers into proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack for thermal management. A 1.32 mm thick vapor chamber is designed and fabricated, and its heat transfer per-formance is verified through tests conducted at different powers using a heating pad. After confirming that vapor chambers can meet the heat dissipation requirements, the output characteristics of the stack coupled with vapor chambers, are experimentally evaluated during both fast start-up and steady-state operation. Results demonstrate that the vapor chamber efficiently operates at a heat flux density of only 0.052 W/cm2 at evaporation section, while maintaining a maximum in-plane temperature difference of 2.6 degrees C at 48 W. During fast start-up loading of the stack from 0 A to 40 A, the vapor chamber exhibits rapid thermal response and excellent temperature uniformity, preventing stack performance degradation due to improper operating temperatures. Compared to a general air-cooled stack, the stack coupled with vapor chambers exhibits a significant 21.7% improvement in stack voltage. These results systematically demonstrate the feasibility of vapor chambers for the thermal man-agement of air-cooled proton exchange membrane fuel cell stacks.

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