Potential Evaluation of Twin-Screw Air Expanders with Dual-Lead Rotors Used in PEMFC Systems

The reduction in the power cost of air supply systems has emerged as a critical challenge in the development of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. This study proposes the use of dual-lead rotors to improve the performance of twin-screw expanders for the purpose of boosting expanders’ recovery power and consequently lowering the power cost of the air supply subsystem, which is hardly investigated in previous publications. For this purpose, a mathematical model is built to assess the potential of improving the expander performance by means of the dual-lead rotors. And the influence of lead and length of the high-pressure rotor segment and overall rotor length are analyzed. The results demonstrate that the smaller lead and larger length of the high-pressure rotor segment result in better geometric characteristics and thus thermodynamic performance. For example, case #4 with dual-lead rotors exhibits a larger rotating angle at the suction end and a larger suction area than those of constant-lead rotors by 43° and 100%, respectively, which further lower the suction pressure loss. Compared with constant-lead rotors, the maximum increments in the mass flowrate and indicated power are observed as 45% and 25.4%, respectively. However, the dual-lead rotors could not effectively contribute to an increase in the isentropic indicated efficiency of twin-screw expanders due to the severe leakage, and hence, it becomes crucial to address the leakage issues in twin-screw expanders.