Performance Evaluation of 2.4 kW Alkaline Fuel Cell Stack for Emergency Applications

The rapid declination of fossil fuel reserves and the adverse impact on the environment inspires renewable energy resource integration. To increase renewable integration, Alkaline Fuel Cell (AFC) is one of the important renewable sources. The alkaline fuel cell contributes to compensating the energy demand with almost zero-emission instead of fossil fuels. In this paper, the dynamic performance of the 2.4 kW AFC stack using MATLAB/SIMULINK is analyzed by changing the fuel flow rate in order to get maximum output power, which can be used for power supply in remote areas and emergency periods when utility grid power is inaccessible. In addition, different parameters i.e., stack voltage, stack current, stack exchange current, stack power, stack efficiency, utilization, fuel flow rate, and DC load current are investigated in this paper. The results show that the voltage of the fuel cell is improved to 70 Vdc to use in residential loads and emergency loads, utilizing DC/DC boost converter.