ADditive End PlaTes for Fuel Cells (ADEPT FC)

气候变化委员会预测，到2050年，航空业可能成为英国排放量的最大贡献者。在全球范围内，预计到同一日期，航空业将占所有运输二氧化碳排放量的22%以上。这一趋势是由乘客数量的快速增长以及缺乏技术解决方案来促进摆脱化石燃料所推动的。尽管COVID-19在短期内减少了排放量，但该行业预计仍将无法实现其2050年的目标，估计排放量为8亿至14亿吨二氧化碳。对于中短程航班，有机会在一定的时间内为飞机开发电气化动力系统，这可能对减少排放产生重大影响。这种动力系统的关键技术将是高功率密度PEM燃料电池系统。与全电池动力系统相比，使用燃料电池将增加飞行范围，更重的有效载荷和更快的周转时间。然而，目前汽车工业的燃料电池系统的功率密度太低，无法在航空领域大规模采用，提高燃料电池系统功率密度的一种方法是减少其质量。PEM燃料电池系统的大约40-50%的质量来自电池堆-负责将燃料的化学势能转换为电能的设备部分。一项为轻量化电池堆组件提供独特机会的技术是增材制造。该项目将利用MTC最近在生产基于粉末床融合-激光（PBF-LB）的铝部件方面取得的进展，为航空应用制造轻量化PEM燃料电池堆。轻量化不仅可以通过利用增材工艺来优化拓扑结构，还可以通过将多功能集成到组件中来实现。目标是将电池堆功率密度提高至少10%，并减少系统中组件的总数。

By 2050, the Committee on Climate Change has forecast that aviation could be the single largest contributor to UK emissions. Globally, it is predicted that aviation will contribute over 22% of all transport CO2 emissions by the same date. This trend is being driven by rapid expansion in passenger numbers, coupled with a lack of technological solutions to facilitate a move away from fossil fuels. Though COVID-19 reduced emissions in the short-term, the industry is still projected to miss its 2050 targets by an estimated 800 -- 1,400 million tons of CO2\.The most promising solution to this growing crisis is the electrification of flight. For short-to-medium haul flights there is an opportunity to develop electrified powertrains for aircraft on a timescale that could have a significant impact in reducing emissions. A key enabling technology for such powertrains will be high-power density PEM fuel cell systems. Compared to all-battery powertrains, utilising fuel cells would allow for increased flight range, heavier payloads, and quicker turn-around times. However, the power densities of current systems derived from the automotive industry are too low to make wide-scale adoption in aviation feasible.One means of increasing the power density of a fuel cell system is to reduce its mass. Approximately 40-50% of the mass of a PEM fuel cell system comes from the stack -- the part of the device responsible for converting the chemical potential energy of the fuel into electrical energy. One technology that offers unique opportunities to lightweight stack components is additive manufacturing.This project will exploit recent advances made at the MTC in producing aluminium parts from Powder Bed Fusion -- Laser Based (PBF-LB) to make a lightweight PEM fuel cell stack for aviation applications. Light-weighting will be achieved not only through exploiting the additive process to make optimised topologies, but by incorporating multi-functionality into components as well. The target will be to increase stack power density by at least 10% and reduce the overall number of components in the system.