Lunar Passive Fuel Cell Technologies: Evaporator + Fluid Polishing Elements

This project investigates key elements of a fully-passive, fuel-cell based, surface power generation concept. The overall concept replaces the actively pumped thermal management of a state of the art (SOA) fuel cell/electrolyzer stack with a passive 2-phase thermosyphon for heat transport and a passive shape memory actuating radiator for temperature management. The elements of the concept investigated in this project are:

Evaporator Element: Evaluating the compatibility of common fuel-cell interconnect materials in the evaporator of a 2-phase water thermosyphon
Fluid Polishing element: The use of membrane gas separation and resin water polishing to address non-condensable gas removal and water purity.