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Fuel Cell Cooling System Design for Hydrogen-Powered Concept Aircraft
Publikationstyp
Conference Paper
Date Issued
2022-09
Sprache
English
Citation
71. Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress (DLRK 2022)
Contribution to Conference
71. Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress, DLRK 2022
Publisher DOI
The integration of hydrogen as an energy source and fuel cell systems as power sources in disruptive aircraft concepts introduces new challenges for on-board systems design. One such challenge is the heat management of low-temperature proton-exchange membrane fuel cells, which have an average efficiency of around 50 %. Although this efficiency is higher than conventional propulsion technologies like gas turbines, these fuel cells operate at a relatively low temperature, between 60°C and 90°C, requiring an active cooling system. This paper presents the design of a cooling system for this fuel cell technology integrated into a hydrogen-powered regional concept aircraft with ten propulsion units based on a potential analysis. Different baseline cooling system layouts are evaluated, analyzing both one-phase and two-phase cooling fluids, along with potential synergy effects with other systems. For example, hydrogen can be used as a heat sink in addition to the air from ram air channels. These architectures are assessed based on systems mass and their influence at the aircraft level, taking into account additional drag from the ram air and the electric power requirements of the cooling system. The results show that for cooling system with ram air as single heat sink, the system mass can be decreased by 43% when using a two-phase cooling fluid instead of a one-phase cooling fluid. Additionally, on system level, the mass of a cooling system with ram air as single heat sink is significantly lower than a cooling system that uses hydrogen as an additional heat sink. However, on aircraft level, the electric power required for hydrogen conditioning needs to be taken into account as well because the hydrogen needs to be conditioned fully electrically for the single-sink architecture.