Abstract
As fuel cell system is environmental friendly generator, its performance depends on its air supply system. Because, fuel cell stack generates electrical energy by electron and the electron is generated by reacting between air and hydrogen. So, more and more compressed air is supplied, more and more the energy can be obtained. In this study, turbo-expander supported by air foil bearing is introduced as the air supply system used by fuel cell systems. The turbo-expander is a turbo machine which operates at high speed, so air foil bearings suit its purpose for the bearing elements. Analysis for confirming the stability and endurance is conducted. Based on FDM and Newton-Raphson method, characteristics of air foil bearing, dynamic coefficients, pressure field and load capacity, are obtained. Using the characteristics of air foil bearing, the rotordynamic analysis is performed by finite element method. The analysis (stability analysis and critical speed map) shows that turbo-expander is stability at running speed. After the analysis, the test process and results are presented. The goals of test are running up to 90,000 RPM, flow rate of 150 $m^3/h$ and pressure ratio of 1.15. The test results show that the aerodynamic performance and stability of turbo-expander are satisfied to the primary goals.
