Design of an air humidifier for a 5 kW proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack operated at elevated temperatures

• An air humidifier is designed for a 5 kW PEMFC stack operated above 90 °C.
• Exhausting heat from coolant is used to preheat the inlet air.
• A nozzle is properly designed to ensure promised humidification.
• Humidification performance is evaluated under different working conditions.

Air humidification is a crucial issue for superior performance of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEM fuel cell) stacks. In this work, an air humidifier is proposed for a 5 kW PEM fuel cell stack working at elevated temperatures, e.g., 90–95 °C. The high temperature coolant exiting the stack is utilized to pre-heat the air in the heat exchanging tubes of the humidifier, and the heated air is humidified with deionized water supplied by a nozzle fixed in a top cavity. Both the tubes and the nozzle are properly designed to ensure sufficient heat transfer and superior atomization. Humidification performance is evaluated under different operation conditions. The nozzle is able to inject well-atomized water with uniform droplet diameter. With the variation of inlet air flow rate, the relative humidity (RH) of the outlet air increases at the beginning, then decreases gradually due to the attenuation of dew point (DP) temperature. However, the humidification performance can be improved when higher temperature deionized water is injected or high temperature coolant is supplied. At a coolant temperature of 95 °C, the outlet air DP temperature is maintained over 80 °C with 25 °C injection water. Moreover, better humidification performance is achieved when the injection water flow rate is controlled according to the working conditions of the stack.