Hydrogen Fuel Cell Customized for UAV
Engineering360 News Desk | January 03, 2017U.S. Naval Research Laboratory engineers completed a flight of the Ion Tiger unmanned air vehicle (UAV) with a hydrogen-powered fuel cell built in-house.
The UAV is being developed for increased flight endurance and durability, and to improve battlefield surveillance and communications capabilities.
Researchers with the Ion Tiger UAV.The researchers designed and built a custom fuel cell system capable of up to 5,000 W, using formed metal-foil bipolar plates to save space and weight. The plates are held together with titanium straps and serve as the structural backbone of the fuel cell system. They provide fluidic pathways for air, hydrogen, and coolant along with electronic pathways for conduction between the individual cells.
The fuel cell replaces the 550 W polymer fuel cell initially installed in the UAV. A custom microcontroller and lightweight air compressor were also fabricated, and gas and coolant flow fields were designed and validated with the laboratory’s own computational fluid design suite.
Every time fuel cells comes up in a conversation with a retired metallurgist friend, he starts shaking his head, with a profusion of rhetorical questions and comments, such as, ''what about fouling?, what about adjusting kinematic rates of power production to meet near instantaneous load surges?, how do all the components respond in harmony to dramatic changes in G forces?, etc." Still, the ONR folks are on the cutting edge. The best of luck.
"The researchers designed and built a custom fuel cell system capable of up to 5,000 W, using formed metal-foil bipolar plates to save space and weight."
This is a great claim. I would love to see the data from the actual flight tests. Would like to see expected flight duration vs actual flight duration ( obviously accounting for the amount of fuel left after landing so one would not crash the drone).
Let's make sure there is a follow up on this article.
Great job researchers.