TY - JOUR
T1 - Thermal management of solid oxide fuel cells with liquid metal
AU - Fan, Junhua
AU - Wang, Yuqing
AU - Tian, Ran
AU - Shi, Jixin
AU - Shi, Yixiang
AU - Cao, Haishan
AU - Cai, Ningsheng
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC
PY - 2023/4/1
Y1 - 2023/4/1
N2 - Effective thermal management of SOFCs is necessary for their long life and highly efficient operation, while the conventional method through excess air cooling is limited due to the inherently low thermal conductivity and capacity of air. In this study, a novel temperature control strategy is proposed by using liquid metal as a new kind of coolant that can work in both the stable operation stage and start-stop stage of an SOFC stack. A three-dimensional model is developed considering chemical/electrochemical reactions, mass, momentum and heat transfer processes to assess the effect of liquid metal cooling. The simulation results show that liquid metal has an excellent ability to improve the temperature uniformity and electric performance of the cell unit. The temperature difference of the cell unit cooled by air cooling is 60 K, which can be decreased to 15 K with liquid tin cooling. Furthermore, inlet air has little effect on the performance of the cell unit when liquid metal is chosen as coolant. The pumping powers of the air and liquid metal are compared at different excess air ratios and inlet velocities of liquid metal. The total pumping power consumption could be dramatically decreased when liquid metal is utilized as the coolant. Furthermore, the variations in the conductivity, heat capacity and convective resistance at different liquid metal inlet velocities are discussed.
AB - Effective thermal management of SOFCs is necessary for their long life and highly efficient operation, while the conventional method through excess air cooling is limited due to the inherently low thermal conductivity and capacity of air. In this study, a novel temperature control strategy is proposed by using liquid metal as a new kind of coolant that can work in both the stable operation stage and start-stop stage of an SOFC stack. A three-dimensional model is developed considering chemical/electrochemical reactions, mass, momentum and heat transfer processes to assess the effect of liquid metal cooling. The simulation results show that liquid metal has an excellent ability to improve the temperature uniformity and electric performance of the cell unit. The temperature difference of the cell unit cooled by air cooling is 60 K, which can be decreased to 15 K with liquid tin cooling. Furthermore, inlet air has little effect on the performance of the cell unit when liquid metal is chosen as coolant. The pumping powers of the air and liquid metal are compared at different excess air ratios and inlet velocities of liquid metal. The total pumping power consumption could be dramatically decreased when liquid metal is utilized as the coolant. Furthermore, the variations in the conductivity, heat capacity and convective resistance at different liquid metal inlet velocities are discussed.
KW - Liquid metal coolant
KW - Low pumping power consumption
KW - Numerical simulation
KW - Thermal management of SOFCs
KW - Uniform temperature distributions
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85145669728&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2022.11.308
DO - 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2022.11.308
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85145669728
SN - 0360-3199
VL - 48
SP - 10659
EP - 10670
JO - International Journal of Hydrogen Energy
JF - International Journal of Hydrogen Energy
IS - 28
ER -
