NRL completes first flight of UAV with custom hydrogen fuel cell with metal bipolar plates; leveraging automotive technology
28 December 2016
Researchers from the US Naval Research Laboratory’s (NRL) chemistry and tactical electronic warfare divisions recently completed the first flight of the Ion Tiger unmanned air vehicle with a new hydrogen-powered fuel cell built in-house.
The NRL team designed and built a custom fuel cell system capable of up to 5,000 watts, using formed metal-foil bipolar plates, which saved space and weight. Ion Tiger flew with the new cell in September.
The decision to move to metal bipolar plates allowed us to leverage a lot of know how from the automotive industry’s large investment in hydrogen fuel cells. Using the plates also enabled enhanced storage capabilities and weight savings that are critical for naval unmanned system applications.
—Dr. Benjamin Gould, NRL’s chief scientist on the project
The bipolar plates, held together with titanium straps, serve as the structural backbone of the fuel cell system, providing fluidic pathways for air, hydrogen, and coolant along with electronic pathways for conduction between the individual cells.
NRL also contributed a custom microcontroller and lightweight air compressor. Gas and coolant flow fields were designed and validated with NRL’s own computational fluid design suite.
Creating components at NRL allows for low-cost modular systems for both prototype development of naval unmanned vehicles and scalability to a range of sizes.
Recent more compact, higher energy density, higher efficiency FCs and improved e-motors will soon be used in many flying machines.
FC/UAVs are early users but larger units will soon be propelled with clean running low noise FCs.
Batteries would need 1,000++ Wh/Kg to compete.
Posted by: HarveyD | 29 December 2016 at 08:53 AM