A lithium-ion (Li-ion) power battery and proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) have an excellent electrical conversion performance, which makes them a hot spot in the new energy power research field. Electricity is generated inside the battery through an electrochemical reaction, during which time a large amount of heat is also generated. The ideal operating temperature of a Li-ion battery and PEMFC falls into a small range, but the operations require a high temperature uniformity. Efficient cooling technology can be used to timely discharge the heat generated and control the temperature field change inside the battery, thus ensuring the battery's efficient and stable performance. The micro heat pipe (MHP) is currently a more efficient passive cooling equipment with high heat fluxes and a high thermal conductivity through the phase change heat transfer of working fluid. The development and research status of an MHP and its application in the cooling of a Li-ion power battery and PEMFC are reviewed in this paper.

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Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) generates electricity through hydrogen and oxygen chemical reaction with the generation of much heat. According to the working temperature of PEMFC, the thermal resistance and internal relative pressure change of the flat-plate micro closed-loop pulsating heat pipe (CLPHP) are tested and analyzed at different filling ratios, vacuum degrees, and inclination angles, whose working medium is binary methanol-deionized water with a mass ratio of 5:1. The experiment results show that the higher the vacuum degree is, the better the startup and heat transfer performance of CLPHP become; the thermal resistance is less sensitive to inclination angle except for horizontal placement; the 40% volume-filling ratio can effectively avoid dry-out at high temperature. When 80 °C is the ideal working temperature of PEMFC, the thermal resistance of CLPHP is 0.093°C/W; the heat transfer heat flux is 1.59 W/cm2, and the temperature fluctuation is small. Therefore, flat-plate CLPHP has great application potential for PEMFC cooling.

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