Technical feasibility assessment of a PEM fuel cell refrigerator system B. Abderezzak a,* , D. Rekioua b , R. Binns c , K. Busawon c , M. Hinaje d , B. Douine d , D. Guilbert d a Laboratoire de L'Energie et des Syst emes Intelligents (LESI), University of Khemis Miliana, Road of Theniet El Had, 44225, Khemis Miliana, Algeria b Laboratoire de Technologie Industrielle et de L'Information(LTII), D epartement de G enie Electrique, Universit e de Bejaia, Bejaia 06000, Algeria c Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, Ellison Building NE1 8ST Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK d Laboratoire GREEN, Facult e des Sciences et Technologies, Universit e de Lorraine, BP 70 239, 54 506, Vandœuvre- l es-Nancy Cedex, France article info Article history: Received 4 March 2018 Received in revised form 3 April 2018 Accepted 6 April 2018 Available online xxx Keywords: PEM fuel cell Refrigeration cycle Zero emission Energy balance Flows consumption Energy storage abstract PEM Fuel Cells (PEMFCs), fueled by hydrogen, are electrochemical devices that convert hydrogen to useful power and two by-products: heat and water. They cover an important part of power applications namely in the transportation area, and in other practical ap- plications that are either stationary or portable. In particular, the domestic refrigerator is one of the daily and indispensable applications but with a high-energy demand due to the high running time cycles. This work is a technical assessment of the feasibility of building a coupled “PEM Fuel Cell e Refrigerator” system. Real technical data for the refrigerator are collected, processed and evaluated. The obtained results show reasonable flows con- sumption rates. In fact, the refrigerator requires a flow rate of 1.607 slpm of hydrogen and 8 slpm of air at a pressure of respectively 3 atm and 1 atm. The water is produced at a rate of 1.285 10 3 slpm. The annual amount of hydrogen consumed by the refrigerator is estimated to 28, 47 kg. The energy provided to the refrigerator is about 130 W and the energy needed by the air compressor is 28, 24 W. A technical solution is suggested at the end of this work to reduce the start and stop cycles of the fuel cell. © 2018 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction The amount of energy consumed in the world is continuously increasing due to the large set of applications in our daily lives. In parallel, the actual trend of energy policy is going to deviate from traditional energy sources towards a gradual independence of fossil fuels. In this context, the fuel cells seems to be one of the potential solutions for achieving this independence of fossil energy sources. The study of fuel cells encompasses many academic dis- ciplines, such as mechanical, chemical, environmental and electrical engineering. In the last few years, an important number of research work tried to describe what is happening inside a single cell, as well as in the work of Abderezzak et al. [1] which deal with the development of a simulation tool for * Corresponding author. E-mail address: b.abderezzak@univ-dbkm.dz (B. Abderezzak). Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/he international journal of hydrogen energy xxx (2018) 1 e9 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2018.04.060 0360-3199/© 2018 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article in press as: Abderezzak B, et al., Technical feasibility assessment of a PEM fuel cell refrigerator system, Inter- national Journal of Hydrogen Energy (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2018.04.060