Novel fuel cell stack with coupled metal hydride containers

To achieve better heat integration, a novel scheme is proposed whereby hydrogen storage and single fuel cells are more closely coupled. Based on this idea, metal hydride containers in the form of cooling plates were assembled between each pair of cells in the stack so that the heat could be directly transferred to a metal hydride container of much larger surface-to-volume ratio than conventional separate containers. A heat coupled fuel cell portable power source with 10 cells and 11 metal hydride containers was constructed and the experimental results show that this scheme is beneficial for the heat management of fuel cell stack.