Fuel Cell VOC Filtration Monitoring System

Fuel cells exist as an alternative and cleaner power source option to fossil fuels, but as a product they tend to be a delicate mix of expensive, hard to replace, and easy to break. One of the ways they’re most susceptible to damage is airborne contaminants, with things like smoke, exhaust, and solid particles in the air being able to make a single fuel cell completely useless via irreversible internal damage. To prevent this kind of damage, adequate filters are needed to keep the internals of the fuel cell protected, but testing said filters is a roadblock on its own. Currently, it costs our client around $5,000 per test per filter to test the effectiveness of various air filters when it comes to safeguarding their fuel cells. Our team’s test stand design would negate those costs almost entirely and make testing easy and efficient in terms of both time and cost, as our design includes easy access to the filter housing so multiple filters can be swapped in and out for individual tests without the need of separate setups, as well as integrated data collection and readout to allow faster and easier-to-understand results.

Background
For the past two years, students at Oregon State University have been working on building this monitoring system for Hyster - Yale. This year the test stand was given to the University of Idaho to continue to work on. Hevel was given the previous test stand as well as all of the information and documentation from the previous teams.

=Specifications= The filtration test stand needs to meet several design specifications in order to be both usable and reliable for testing filters for fuel cells. The test stand will utilize low cost air quality sensors and a gas injection system.

Must be able to measure:
 * Mass air flow
 * Inlet and outlet air temperature
 * Inlet and outlet gas concentraion

Test stand will inlcude:
 * A primary air mover
 * Applicable flow control
 * Appropriate ducting
 * Gas injection system
 * Testing of multiple filters
 * Data acquisiton system

=Design Developments=

Initial Designs and Project Expectations
Hevel was given an inital test stand with the code from the previous team.

Test Stand Operation
With the previous design in mind and using the old documentation Hevel figured out how the test stand operated. The inital design did test provided data from the sensors however Hyster - Yale would like Hevel to continue devloping the stand.

Hevel will do this by designing an air quality data acquisition system and mounting it to the test stand, integrating a mass air flow data acquistion, designing a more robust gas injection system, identifying a way to accurately determine injection concentration, validating air quailty sensor data and ideal sensor use, and clean up the design.

Design Validation
=Team Members=

=Additional Documentation=

Project Schedule

Meeting Minutes

Budget