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As the most power-consuming component of the fuel cell system, the compressor directly affects the efficiency of the system. Using turbines to recover energy from the exhaust gas, has become a feasible means to improve the fuel cell system’s efficiency. Previous designs are mainly based on high-temperature (>523.15 K) gas. However, the exhaust gas temperature of the proton exchange membrane fuel cell is only about 348.15 K, which is much lower than the working fluid temperature of typical turbines (such as those used in internal combustion engine). In this paper, a turbine rotor for a 100kW fuel cell system was designed. The influences of non-design structural parameters including blade inlet incline angle, blade thickness, blade tip clearance and blade number on the aerodynamic performance and internal flow of the rotor are investigated. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model of the rotor single flow is established to predict the turbine aerodynamic performance.

Electric centrifugal air compressor is one of the most important auxiliary components for the fuel cell engine, which has great impacts on the system efficiency, cost and compactness. However, the centrifugal compressor works at an ultra-high speed for a long time, which poses a great challenge to the lives of motor, bearing and seal. Therefore, reducing the rotating speed of the impeller and maintaining high pressure ratio and high efficiency are important issues for aerodynamic design of the compressor. In this paper, a centrifugal compressor rotor for a 100kW fuel cell system is designed. Aiming at reducing the rotating speed, the influences of three key structural parameters including inlet blade angle, outlet blade angle and blade outlet radius on performance are investigated. The aerodynamic performance of the compressor is predicted using the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with computational fluid dynamic (CFD) tools.