Due to ever stricter economical and legislative regulations, the efficiency of technical processes has to be constantly increased. Besides many other efficiency enhancing methods, the use of waste heat has a great potential to save energy. In particular, the use of waste heat at temperatures above 373 K offers many possibilities, as it is mostly unused today. In order to exploit these potentials, a new latent heat storage system using a polymer as a phase change material has been developed during the R&D project "eleMeMe -Decentralized decoupling of power generation and energy supply through onsite electrochemical methanol production and methanol fuel cells". The storage is used to operate a hightemperature methanol fuel cell. Usually the fuel cell must be electrically preheated before the start to reach its optimum operating temperature. During operation, heat is generated and the system has to be air cooled to maintain its temperature. Instead of cooling the system with air, the heat is now stored in a latent heat storage system to start the fuel cell later.
Waste heat from industrial applications offers a high but mostly unused potential due to the time differences between its generation and possible consumption. By using waste heat, the energy efficiency can be increased and therefore, the overall costs and emissions can be reduced. This work shows the feasibility of increasing the energy efficiency of a high‐temperature methanol fuel cell using a latent heat storage with the help of full‐scale experiments. The fuel cell needs to be preheated for start up to reach its operation temperature. During operation, heat is generated at a temperature of 433 K and the system needs to be air‐cooled to maintain its temperature. Instead of cooling the fuel cell with air and losing the heat to the environment, the waste heat is now stored in a latent heat storage to later be used for preheating the fuel cell. Different experiments are conducted to find the optimum operation point of the latent heat storage in combination with the fuel cell. The aging and the cycling stability of high density polyethylene, which is used as phase change material in the latent heat storage, is monitored as well as the mechanical stability of the system.
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