Profile Design and Performance Research of Hydrogen Circulation Pump in Fuel Cell System

Abstract

A general design formula for rotor profile is proposed based on conjugation theory and feasibly verified by using the four different design shapes. The overset mesh method and the realizable k-ε two-layer turbulence model are used for simulation calculation. The results stated that the average volume flow error of hydrogen medium and air medium is small, so an alternative experimental study has been carried out. By building a test system for experimental verification, it is found that the error between the simulation results and the experimental results is small at the low-pressure ratio and increases at the high-pressure ratio because the influence of the ambient temperature is not considered. The results further verified the reliability using the simulation calculation method. At last, the fluid characteristics of the two-tangent-arcs type, single-arc type, ellipse type, and quadratic-curve type rotors are evaluated. The result shows that the comprehensive performance of the single-arc type rotor is superlative as followed by the ellipse type rotor. However, the quadratic-curve rotor has the largest average flow but the worst flow stability and the two-tangent-arcs rotor shows the smallest average flow.