Performance Analysis of PEMFC Coupled with Recuperative Organic Rankine Cycle for Waste Heat Recovery

Abstract

In this research work, a hybrid system comprising a PEMFC coupled with a recuperative organic Rankine cycle was proposed to improve the performance of PEMFC by harnessing thermal energy from the cooling water using a heat exchanger. Steady state mathematical modeling of PEMFC thermally integrated with RORC was established based on the laws of thermodynamics. Three working refrigerants namely R-245fa, R-123, and R-141b were analyzed for this purpose. MATLAB environment was used to simulate the hybrid system model and predict the performance of the system. Based on the simulation results, a parametric analysis was performed to study a few performance parameters of the hybrid system. The results were analyzed, and are now presented in this paper.