ADditive End PlaTes for Fuel Cells (ADEPT FC)

By 2050, the Committee on Climate Change has forecast that aviation could be the single largest contributor to UK emissions. Globally, it is predicted that aviation will contribute over 22% of all transport CO2 emissions by the same date. This trend is being driven by rapid expansion in passenger numbers, coupled with a lack of technological solutions to facilitate a move away from fossil fuels. Though COVID-19 reduced emissions in the short-term, the industry is still projected to miss its 2050 targets by an estimated 800 -- 1,400 million tons of CO2\.

The most promising solution to this growing crisis is the electrification of flight. For short-to-medium haul flights there is an opportunity to develop electrified powertrains for aircraft on a timescale that could have a significant impact in reducing emissions. A key enabling technology for such powertrains will be high-power density PEM fuel cell systems. Compared to all-battery powertrains, utilising fuel cells would allow for increased flight range, heavier payloads, and quicker turn-around times. However, the power densities of current systems derived from the automotive industry are too low to make wide-scale adoption in aviation feasible.

One means of increasing the power density of a fuel cell system is to reduce its mass. Approximately 40-50% of the mass of a PEM fuel cell system comes from the stack -- the part of the device responsible for converting the chemical potential energy of the fuel into electrical energy. One technology that offers unique opportunities to lightweight stack components is additive manufacturing.

This project will exploit recent advances made at the MTC in producing aluminium parts from Powder Bed Fusion -- Laser Based (PBF-LB) to make a lightweight PEM fuel cell stack for aviation applications. Light-weighting will be achieved not only through exploiting the additive process to make optimised topologies, but by incorporating multi-functionality into components as well. The target will be to increase stack power density by at least 10% and reduce the overall number of components in the system.