ABSTRACT

A low specific speed centrifugal compressor powered

by an ordinary electric motor (20, 000 rpm) has been
designed at Tsinghua University for air systems
application of automotive fuel cell engines. Preliminary
design characteristics have been concluded. Three-
Dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is
used to investigate the flow field of the impeller. The
characteristic curve and primary aerodynamic
parameters of designed impeller are achieved. The
experimental results indicate that the designed low
specific speed centrifugal compressor has comparatively
high efficiency and wide operating range. The highest
efficiency and pressure ratio of the centrifugal
compressor is up to 78% and 1.42, respectively. The
designed low specific speed centrifugal compressor can
meet the requirement of air systems of automotive fuel
cell engines. Moreover, the low specific speed
centrifugal compressor avoids difficulties of usage of
high-speed electric motors in high specific speed
compressor.
NOMENCLATURE
C absolute velocity
s
N
non-dimensional specific speed
Q
volumetric flow rate
U rotational velocity
W Relative velocity
h A
specific isentropic enthalpy
e Rotational angular speed
INTRODUCTION
Research and development of fuel cell systems for
multiple applications has dramatically increased in the
past few years. However, the vehicular application of the
fuel cell system leads to a number of unique challenges,
such as physical packaging within the vehicle, durability
and operation under extreme environmental conditions,
and demanding duty cycles that include high peak power
requirements and a rapid response time, etc.
Pressurizing technology can give higher efficiency,
higher power density and better water balance
characteristics for the fuel cell system. However, at
present there is no mature compressor which can ideally
match the air system of fuel cell systems.
The requirements of pressurized fuel cell systems
include: compact structure, light weight, oil-free of air,
low operate noise, easy maintaining, low cost and high
operate efficiency [1]. Nowadays, a variety of
compressors are being developed for fuel cell
applications. The centrifugal compressor, one of
compressors suitable for fuel cell systems, proves to be
a superior machine in terms of efficiency, and therefore
offers the most promising effect on system efficiency.
Moreover, it has the advantages of small volume, low
cost, high reliability, etc.
In order to pressurize the air, it is necessary to use
some auxiliary power to operate centrifugal compressors
since exhaust gas power of fuel cell systems by now is
not powerful enough to drive turbines working with
centrifugal compressors. As one of the auxiliary powers,
a high speed electric motor (around 60000 rpm) can be
used to drive centrifugal compressors. A turbocharger
type compressor system integrated with a high-speed
(>100,000 rpm) motor is being developed by Honeywell
[2]. This system makes fuel cell pressurizing air system
more compact and has quicker response characteristic.
However, usage of high-speed motor causes several
serious issues including high cost, complex maintain,
low stability, need of special cooling system, etc.
Therefore this type of compressor system is hard to be
applied into commercialization products [3].
If an ordinary motor (20000rpm) is used, the
problems of high speed motors could be avoided.
However, if centrifugal compressors are still designed
conventionally in this case, pressure ratio can only
achieve around 1.05 to 1.1, therefore cannot meet the
pressurizing requirements of air systems for fuel cells.
So it is necessary to design a centrifugal compressor
2008-01-1692
Research and Design of a Centrifugal Compressor
for Fuel Cell Turbocharger
Xinqian Zheng and Yangjun Zhang
State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Tsinghua University
Copyright 2008 SAE International
with higher pressure ratio on the same condition of
rotational speed and mass flow, i.e., to design a low
specific speed centrifugal compressor. However, under
low specific speed condition, it is a challenge to design a
centrifugal compressor with high efficiency and wide
operation range characteristic Moreover, there barely is
reference regarding this type design.
Compressor design software, Concept, has been used
to design and analyze the low specific speed centrifugal
compressor [4]. Also, Computational Fluid Dynamics
(CFD) software, Numeca, is used to analyze flow
behavior inside the compressor. The results show that
designed low specific speed centrifugal compressor has
a reasonable performance.
COMPRESSOR DESIGN
The main design parameters of automotive fuel cell
low specific speed compressor are: design rotational
speed 20000 rpm, design pressure ratio 1.4 ~1.45,
design flow 0.1~0.15 kg/s, reasonable surge tolerance.
Within rotational speed of 20000 rpm for ordinary motors,
in order to reach pressure ration of 1.4, there must be
some different design characteristics for low specific
speed from the conventional centrifugal compressor
design, as shown below:
LOW SPECIFIC SPEED DESIGN
Non-dimensional specific speed N
s
is given by:
1/ 2
3/ 4 s
Q
N
h
e =
A
( e is the rotational speed, Q is the
volumetric flow rate, h A is the specific isentropic
enthalpy). Specific speed qualitatively shows work ability
of compressors. With same rotational speed, higher
specific speed means higher compressor ratio. Specific
speed for conventional design of centrifugal
compressors is typically around between 0.7 and 1.0 so
that compressors can achieve comparatively high
efficiency. However, compared to conventional design,
low specific speed centrifugal compressors have higher
inverse pressure gradient and larger fraction of
secondary flow. Therefore profound understanding of
flow characteristic inside stage is needed to design a
high performance low specific speed centrifugal
compressor.
ONE-DIMENSIONAL DESIGN
Figure 1 shows the meridian plane of the low specific
speed centrifugal compressor design.
Fig. 1 Meridian plane of centrifugal compressor
design
Inducer of impeller uses comparatively small radius
of curvature and adopt zero-incidence design to be
suitable for low flow rate work condition of fuel cell
systems. Elongate blade design is required to meet the
demand of high pressure ratio within low rotational
speed and low flow rate. Because of low specific speed
characteristic, properly widen impeller exit blade height
in order to decrease relative speed inside impeller
passage, thereby, reduce secondary flow effect.
Moderately big impeller radius is needed to generate
high tangent velocity of exit, therefore, make
compressors able to output high pressure ratio under
low rotational speed. But the maximum impeller radius is
limited by the requirement of compact design of fuel cell
systems.
Diffuser is used to converts kinetic energy of air
exiting from impeller into static pressure. Automotive
centrifugal compressor normally uses vaneless diffuser
due to wide operation range and small volume. Air flows
almost as a logarithmic curve inside of vaneless diffuser.
At the exit of low specific speed impeller, tangential
velocity of air is much higher than radial velocity of air
along impeller blade, which indicates that absolute
velocity of airflow inside vaneless diffuser is quite close
to tangential direction (see Fig.2). As a result, the
distance air flows in the vaneless diffuser greatly
increases so that frictional losses are high and therefore
back flow occurs easily. In order to reduce these losses,
short vaneless diffuser is required in this case.
Because of low radial velocity of air and low flow rate,
small diameter of volute is adopted for low specific
speed centrifugal compressor.
Fig. 2 Velocity triangle of exit of designed impeller
C) Volute design:
PERFORMANCE PREDICTION
Use Compal module of Concept NREC to predict
performance of whole compressor stage including
impeller, vaneless diffuser, and volute. The results are
shown in Fig.3 and Fig.4 indicating that the stage
pressure ratio reaches 1.5 with efficiency of 76 % at
rotational speed of 20000 rpm, which meets design
requirements.
Fig. 3 Pressure Ratio-Flow Rate performance curve
of designed stage
Fig. 4 Efficiency-Flow Rate performance curve of
designed stage
IMPELLER THREE-DIMENSIONAL DESIGN
Use Axcent module of Concept to design the
compressor three-dimensionally. Because blades are
designed narrow and with small curvature radius,
comparatively big blade wrap angle is used to reduce
load on unit area of blades and also decrease the
velocity difference between pressure face and suction
surface to control the formation of secondary flow,
therefore improve flow characteristic and reduce
divergence loss. Adopt split blades to lessen flow block
effect. Use shortest axial length of impeller in order to
decrease the volume. 40backward angle is applied to
raise efficiency and widen steady operation range.
FLOW ANALYSIS
A CDF software NUMECA is used to simulate three
dimensional flow field of designed centrifugal
compressor. Use Navier-Stokes equation as control
equation and Spalart-Allmaras model as turbulence
viscosity. Because flow velocity inside low specific
speed centrifugal compressors is low, volute slightly
affects flow performance. Therefore, to save amount of
simulating calculation, only one of the blade flow
passages needs to be calculated instead of all-around
impeller flow passages with volute based on rotational
symmetry assumption. For the simulation, mesh one
blade flow passage with 30, 0000 nodes, define
stagnation temperature, stagnation pressure, velocity
direction, and static pressure of impeller inlet, define flow
rate of impeller exit and give periodic boundary condition
circumferentially.
Simulation is taken at different rotational speed of
20000 rpm (design rotational speed), 18000 rpm, and
16000 rpm. Performance curves of designed impeller
are plotted in Fig.5 and Fig.6 showing that the highest
efficiency and pressure of designed centrifugal
compressor (without considering volute) are 83 % and
1.6 separately. This indicates that designed centrifugal
compressor has fairly wide and flat operating
characteristic, which satisfies the requirement of wide
operation range for fuel cell systems.
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25
0.0
0.3
0.6
0.9
1.2
1.5
1.8
20000 r/min
18000 r/min
16000 r/min
P
r
e
s
s
u
r
e

R
a
t
i
o
Flow Rate / kg/s
Fig. 5 Pressure Radio-Flow Rate performance curve
of designed impeller (including diffuser)
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
20000 r/min
18000 r/min
16000 r/min
E
f
f
i
c
i
e
n
c
y


(
%
)
Flow Rate / kg/s
Fig. 6 Efficiency-Flow Rate performance curve of
designed impeller (including diffuser)
Figure 7 and Figure 8 illustrate static pressure
distribution on pressure surfaces and suction surfaces of
main blades and splitter blades, showing that loads on
pressure surface and suction surface are mostly the
same so that it avoids miscibility loss at exit of main
blades and splitter blades. The static pressure
distribution curves are mainly smooth except that there
is a little peak value exchange of static pressure in the
beginning of the curves due to flow stagnation effect
from beginning edge of blades. As a whole, static
pressure distribution is reasonable.
Fig. 7 Static pressure of main and splitter blade
Fig. 8 Static pressure of main and splitter blade
Figure 9 illustrates the absolute velocity vector of air
at exit of designed impeller. It shows absolute velocity
vector of airflow is almost parallel to tangential direction
of impeller since tangential velocity is much bigger than
radial velocity of air (effect from high pressure ratio at
low flow rate), which perfectly supports the linear
dimensional analysis before shown in Fig.2. Therefore, it
strengthens the design of short vaneless diffuser for low
specific speed centrifugal compressors in order to
reduce friction loss inside the diffuser.
Fig. 9 Absolute velocity vectors near exit of the
impeller
EXPERIMENTS
After optimization design, the centrifugal compressor is
manufactured. In order to obtain the experimental
performance conveniently, the designed centrifugal
compressor is driven by a turbine just like an experiment for a
turbocharger. The turbine is driven by the pressured air which
is hot up in combustion. The total pressure p
-
is measured by
total pressure rake with 0.2% inaccuracy. Total temperature
T
-
is measured by thermocouple with inaccuracy 0.5.
Mass flow m is measured by vortex flowmeter with
inaccuracy 1%.
The experimental results including pressure ratio,
efficiency contours, power contours, corrected mass flow and
corrected rotation speed are plotted in Fig. 10 and Fig. 11. The
pressure ratio t is the ratio of absolute outlet pressure
2
P
-
divided by absolute inlet pressure
1
P
-
. The efficiency
contours in Fig. 10 is defined as
1
2 1
( ) 1
1
k k
t t
T T
t
q

(1)
The corrected mass flow is defined as
1
1
100
298
t
cor
t
T kPa
m m
K P
=
(2)
The corrected shaft speed is defined as
1
298
cor
t
K
n n
T
=
(3)
Then, the power contours in Fig. 11 are calculated by the
following formula
2 1
( )
cor p t t
P m C T T = (4)
Figure 10 shows pressure ratio and efficiency contours of
the centrifugal compressor with low specific speed. The
highest pressure ratio of the centrifugal compressor is up to
1.42. The maximum efficiency ring is 78%, which is close to
the efficiency of conventional centrifugal compressor. Figure
11 shows pressure ratio and power contours of the centrifugal
compressor. Power consumption of compressor is important
for performance of full cell. Power consumption of
compressor is below 5kW for most conditions.
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!.30
!.3
!.+0
!.+
0.00 0.0 0.!0 0.! 0.?0 0.?
Corrected mass flow /(Kg/s)
P
r
e
s
s
u
r
e

R
a
t
i
o
!+000m
!b000m
!8000m
?0000m
b0
b
b8
8
!?000m
!0000m
8000m

?
Fig. 10 Experimental performance map of
centrifugal compressor: pressure ratio & efficiency
contours.
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!.0
!.!0
!.!
!.?0
!.?
!.30
!.3
!.+0
!.+
0.00 0.0 0.!0 0.! 0.?0 0.?
Corrected mass flow /(Kg/s)
P
r
e
s
s
u
r
e

R
a
t
i
o
1 kW
3 kW
5 kW
4 kW
2 kW
8000m
!0000m
!?000m
!+000m
!b000m
!8000m
?0000m
Fig. 11 Experimental performance map of
centrifugal compressor: pressure ratio & power
contours.
CONCLUSIONS
A low specific speed centrifugal compressor for
automotive fuel cell systems is designed in this project.
This centrifugal compressor can be driven by an
ordinary electric motor, therefore has advantages of low
cost, easy manufacture, long life length to be fit for low
flow rate condition.
The experimental results show that designed low
specific speed centrifugal compressor reaches efficiency
of 78 % and pressure ratio of 1.42, which basically fulfils
the pressurizing requirements of fuel cell systems.
ACKNOWLEDGE
The authors would like to thank for Weidong Xing,
Junyue Zhang, Jizhong Zhang, and other researchers in
National Key Lab. of Diesel Engine Turbocharging Tech.
This project has been supported by FuYuan
Turbochargers CO., LTD (Weifang, Shandong, China).
REFERENCES
1. Vine, A. J., Thornton, W. E., Pullen, K. R., et al,
2005, Low Specific Speed Turbocompressors,
International Conference on Compressors and their
Systems, London: Springer225-234.
2. Mark, G., 2004, Cost and Performance
Enhancements for a PEM Fuel Cell
Turbocompressor, DOE Hydrogen, Fuel Cells &
Infrastructure Technologies Program Review
Presentation, Honeywell Systems, Systems &
Services, Philadelphia.
3. Chen, Q. S., Qi, Z. N., 2001, Technology Challenge
and Prospect of Fuel Cell Vehicle, Automotive
Engineering, 23(6): 361-364. (in Chinese)
4. Japikse, D., 2006, Centrifugal Compressor Design
and Performance, Vermont: Concepts ETI, Inc.