Conceptual design of expander-compressor unit for fuel cell systems

연료전지용 팽창기-압축기 개념설계

This paper introduces conceptual design of scroll expander-compressor unit for fuel cell. Since air discharged out of the fuel cell stack after reaction has still high pressure energy, some power can be extracted out of it by directing it to pass through an expanding device so that the extracted power can be used to drive an auxiliary compressor. For this purpose, a scroll type expander coupled to a scroll type compressor was designed: orbiting scroll of the expander and that of the compressor were made to share three of common drive pins installed in the mid frame plate, and central cavity in the mid-plate was used as a back pressure chamber to provide axial compliance for both orbiting scrolls. Performance analysis for the expander showed that the shaft power of the expander could reduce the auxiliary power consumption in the fuel cell by about one third at the scroll clearance of $10{\mu}m$.