AFCAD

The AFCAD (Advanced Fuel Cells for Aviation Decarbonisation) Project is a joint research project which aims to rapidly develop high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane (HTPEM) fuel cell technology for aviation.

Funded by the Department for Business and Trade, the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) and Innovate UK, AFCAD project will bring zero-emission, hydrogen-electric propulsion to large aircraft applications. This project brings together the industry lead ZeroAvia and three academic partners. Zero-emission propulsion at that scale is uniquely enabled by ZeroAvia’s high temperature polymer electrolyte membrane (HTPEM) fuel cell stack technology. AFCAD will focus on research, build, test and evaluation of stack technologies (bipolar plates (BPP), membrane electrode assembly (MEA)) and their integration into a stack, with four main metrics being improved: Power Output, Specific Power, Efficiency and Durability.

Kent team’s role within the project focuses on in-house short stack testing with in-situ temperature measurement. Kent team will design and engineer the tooling for the in-situ temperature measurement to evaluate the temperature distribution on the surface of the MEA operating in the numerous simulated conditions. The data should indicate the success of the materials and design to support the effective heat rejection out of the
cell.