Rapid thermal response and sensitivity analysis of proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack with ultra-thin vapor chambers

Highlights: • Thermal circuit model is developed for proton exchange membrane fuel cell stacks. • Model could well predict real experiment of stacks results. • Vapor chamber can nicely decrease thermal response time of the stacks. • More attention should be paid to reduce the thermal contact resistance of stacks. Vapor chamber (VC) embedded in proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) stacks is an effective approach for thermal management of PEMFC stacks due to high thermal conductivity and temperature uniformity of VC. To quantitatively analyze the effect of VC on the dynamic thermal response of PEMFC stacks, a thermal equivalent circuit model is developed for PEMFC stacks cooled by VC. Each component in the stacks is regarded as a corresponding thermal resistance in the heat transfer process. The heat capacity of components is also applied on the model to couple the dynamic response. A series of key parameters on the thermal performance of the stacks are analyzed. The analysis result shows that the stacks have the fast temperature rise within 60 s of the start-up phase and VC nicely decrease the thermal response time of stacks. Parameters on temperature sensitivity of the stacks are also discussed. Thermal contact resistance and cooling velocity are significant factors on temperature sensitivity of stacks, but the temperature sensitivity becomes lower and even less than 0.01 with the increase of velocity. These works will help to design and optimize the thermal management system of PEMFC stacks.