On the Performance of Hybrid PV/Unitized Regenerative Fuel Cell System in the Tropics

Solar hydrogen system is a unique power system that can meet the power requirements for future energy demands. Such a system uses the hydrogen as the energy carrier, which produces energy through the electrolyzer with assistance of the power from the PV during the sunny hours, and then uses stored hydrogen to produce energy through the fuel cell after sunset or on cloudy days. The current study has used premanufactured unitized regenerative fuel cells in which the electrolyzer and the fuel cell function within one cell at different modes. The system components were modeled and the one-day real operational and simulated data has been presented and compared. The measured results showed the ability of the system to meet the proposed load, and the total efficiency was about 4.5%

Review of the membrane and bipolar plates materials for conventional and unitized regenerative fuel cells

Fuel cell or hydrogen systems offer the potential for clean, reliable and on-site energy generation. This article review current literature with the objective of identifying the latest development in membrane and bipolar plates for the conventional fuel cell and unitized regenerative fuel cell (URFC). The result shows that the choice of both the bipolar plates and the catalysts for URFC electrodes is a delicate task, for bipolar plate the corrosion in the oxygen side will be the major problem and for the electrodes a very good candidate for fuel cell mode will not function well in the electrolyser mode and therefore it is suggested that a compromise should be considered. It is recommended that aluminum, titanium or for best results titanium with a gold-coated layer is a suitable candidate as the bipolar plate and Pt/IrOX or Pt/Ru is suitable for an oxygen side catalyst in the URFC. For the conventional fuel cell the task is more easer because the corrosion problem is no more effective and thus the main goals for most of the studies was to concentrate on bipolar plate cost reduction, increase electrical conduction and reducing the platinum loading rate for catalyst.Fuel cell Bipolar plate Unitized Titanium Membrane Catalyst