Experimental analysis of a PEMFC-based CCP system integrated with adsorption chiller

Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is promising in the next-generation integrated energy systems. Recovering its byproduct of waste heat for effective cooling production is important to develop efficient distributed energy supply cycles. Existing PEMFC-based combined cooling and power (CCP) systems mostly adopt adsorption refrigeration to recover waste heat, but they suffer from low efficiencies. Herein, a high-efficiency PEMFC-based CCP demonstration system using an efficient adsorption chiller for waste heat recovery is built and its performance is experimentally studied. Results indicate that the system efficiency is greatly improved by 15.98%–23.23 % via the efficient reuse of the PEMFC's waste heat. Further parametric studies suggest that a high output electrical power facilitates the simultaneous production of electricity and cooling power, while a low output electrical power is beneficial to the CCP efficiency promotion. Also, a lower inlet cooling water temperature, a higher inlet chilled water temperature and a shorter refrigeration duration can enhance the performance of the CCP system. The maximum CCP efficiency is 71.57 %, which represents a substantial improvement over previous studies and achieves a major breakthrough in performance of PEMFC-based CCP systems. Economic and environmental analyses towards this CCP system reveal that the payback periods are 3.21, 4.19 and 8.48 years at the respective hydrogen costs of 10.87, 13.50 and 17.87 CNY/kg, and after 10 years of operation, a total of 2791.6-ton CO2 emission will be cut down. Such a CCP demonstration prototype provides constructive suggestions to build fuel cell-based trigeneration systems, and offers an efficient and sustainable solution for distributed energy supply applications.