Chinese scientists have installed a “hydrogen-powered heart” in drones”

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The Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, announced that on May 10, the \"high specific power cathode closed-air-cooled fuel cell\" technology developed by the team led by Academician Chen Zhongwei and Associate Researcher Zhang Meng from the National Key Laboratory of Energy Catalytic Conversion at this institute passed the evaluation of scientific and technological achievements organized by the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation. Experts on the evaluation committee unanimously agreed that this achievement is highly innovative, with advanced technical indicators and independent intellectual property rights. The specific power density of the fuel cell stack ranks among the highest levels internationally, and the overall technology has reached the international leading level. Problems such as the short battery life of traditional lithium batteries and the bulkiness of existing fuel cell systems have become bottlenecks hindering the development of this industry. To this end, the research team spent many years working on this project and developed this \"hydrogen energy core\" that combines light weight, high power, and air-cooled cooling – enabling a transition from the laboratory stage to large-scale application. Industrial drones equipped with this system have a flight time that is more than twice as long as those using traditional batteries. On that day, the hydrogen drone equipped with this fuel cell successfully completed its test flight. According to third-party testing, the key performance indicators of this project perform well. Among them, the specific power of the air-cooled electrode stack reaches 1970 W/kg, while the surface power density is 1.15 W/cm2. This project overcame three key technologies, systematically resolving the conflict between \"water retention\" and \"oxygen mass transfer\" in air-cooled fuel cells: the first is the multi-scale regulation technology for the catalytic layer, which addresses the common problems of declining catalytic performance in low-humidity environments as well as carbon corrosion caused by anode back-reaction ； The second is the asymmetric water transfer technology, which eliminates the technical contradiction in traditional air-cooled reactors where a \"dry film\" and \"water flooding\" condition coexist ； Third is the microchannel enhanced heat transfer and hydrothermal coupling technology, which has overcome the thermal management bottleneck under high power density conditions. At present, the project has established a full-chain independent R&D system covering \"materials – components – systems,\" has developed complete independent intellectual property rights, and filed 21 domestic invention patents. The project team has developed an automated production line for cathode-sealed air-cooled fuel cells, enabling large-scale delivery; these products have been applied in practical scenarios such as forestry, agriculture, power grid inspection, and emergency rescue.