Superconducting coil fed by PEM fuel cell

Overview & Synopsis

Fuel cells are electrochemical energy converters which allow transformation of the chemical energy of a fuel to electricity through oxido-reduction reaction. The voltage of an elementary cell is usually near 1 V in open circuit and around 0.6 V in nominal conditions of power generation. Fuel cells are then by essence low voltage sources, so that for most practical applications, power management is carried out by electronic converters, allowing in particular to rise the voltage to usual application levels. In this paper, we propose to take advantage of this low voltage for a specific application stack such as superconducting coils power supply. At present, such applications are dealt with the use of specific electronic power supplies, exhibiting in most cases a huge volume and/or a low energy yield.