Heat Transfer Engineering

Department of Engineering and Physics ENGR 4123/5023: Heat Transfer

Fall 2020 Class Project: Thermal Management of a Microfluidic Fuel Cell

Recently fuel cell technology has drawn a tremendous interest to the researchers and scientists as it becomes a promising, highly efficient and environmental-friendly power source for many engineering applications. However, a number of technological constraints and challenges including thermal management issues prevents the full commercialization of this promising power source. Thermal management plays an important role in fuel cell performance, design and optimization. In this class project, you will review heat transfer/thermal management issues in microfluidic fuel cell (that are limiting the performance) to have knowledge about the current state of the art research and initiatives to solve these issues. Each of you, review the recent research and effort to understand the mechanism and improve the thermal management in different perspective such as experimental, theoretical and numerical modeling (choose either one of them). At the end of your review, you will write a report where you need to identify the key issues, the current research initiatives, select a model paper that can be mimicked/reproduced here at UCO with our existing resources and a brief outline the steps to reproduce the results of the model paper. The project will be completed with three parts and for each part, you need to submit a report as described below. Here are specifics about the report: Part 1: Find at least 10 peer reviewed journal/conference paper (between 2015-2020) and select a model paper from where a set of results can be reproduced with our existing facilities i.e. experimental, computational and analytical resources (choose either one of them). The selection of papers should have some sort of consistency and relevancy in your perspective. Identify the key factors that are addressed in each of the paper. Submission: You need to submit a 1page (single spaced, 12 font size in Times Roman) report about your review, selection of model paper and the keys issues that are addressed in the papers. In this report list all 10 reference papers (Due: 04/18/2020 by 5 pm). Part 2: Based on your select of model paper, you will find another 5 journal papers that are even closer to your model paper and can help to dig into the details of the method/procedure and understand them. Figure out the step by step procedures, requirement or resources to reproduce the results of your model paper. Especially focus on how to do thermal management of the design. Submission: Submit a report that will provide us a blue print/step by step procedures to mimic/reproduce the results of your selected model paper with an executive summary, introduction, procedures/methods, discussion and conclusion. Include all 15 reference. (Due: 05/03/2020)