Aerostack

Airbus’ ambition to bring a ZEROe Commercial Aircraft to Market by 2035 led to the foundation of Aerostack GmbH, to focus on hydrogen Fuel Cell stack research and development. It is a Joint Venture comprised of Airbus (90%) and ElringKlinger AG (10%).

With the vision of having H2 based Fuel Cells as a zero emission energy converter for aeronautic applications, Aerostack GmbH sets the scope on the development and prototyping of Fuel Cell Stacks. The company is located in Dettingen/Erms (site of ElringKlinger AG) and Taufkirchen (site of  Airbus).

In 2021, NLR carried out a feasibility study for two-phase cooling of fuel cells in close cooperation with Airbus. In this study, system analyses and experiments with two-phase cooling for plates that were representative for fuel cells have been carried out. These analyses and small scale experiments showed promising results. Two-phase cooling can potentially result in a large reduction of the mass of the cooling system for fuel cell, and is therefore further investigated in this project.

Aerostack GmbH (AER) contributes to a new cooling system architecture taking an alternative to the baseline liquid cooling approach into consideration via the two-phase cooling (2-PC) approach. AER will define requirements and interfaces for the FC stack and the 2-PC test rig. The impact of 2-PC on FC stacks will be investigated including: simulations of heat transfer, impacts of thea new coolant and the associated impacts on FC operation.

In Addition, AER works on the Catalyst-coated membrane optimisation and MEA-validation at stack level. Mainly addressing higher operating temperature and increased electrical efficiency operation with decreased catalyst degradation.