Solid oxide fuel cell/gas turbine hybrid system analysis for high-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles

High-altitude long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are ideally suited to provide surveillance, remote sensing and communication relay capabilities for both military and civilian applications. HALE UAVs typically cruise at an altitude between 15 km and 20 km, travelling at low speed and circling specific areas of interest. The work reported aims to investigate alternative power system architectures that enable an efficiency increase and consequent fuel consumption reduction to realise a one-week endurance target. Specifically, the application of a solid oxide fuel cell combined with a gas turbine is considered; with different system configurations modelled with a view to maximising overall efficiency. It is found that modularising the fuel cell capacity into a number of discrete stacks such that the fuel is distributed in parallel and air is fed in series results in an increased system efficiency compared with a single-stack design. An overall system efficiency of 66.3% (LHV) when operating on hydrogen is predicted for a three-stack system.