Investigations of a novel proton exchange membrane fuel cell-driven combined cooling and power system in data center applications

•A PEMFC-driven CCP system with heat pipe for data center applications is proposed.•New operation strategies for power and cooling supplies in a CCP system are proposed.•Performances of two PEMFC-driven CCP systems with multiple cooling are compared.•Effect of heat pipe on the power and cooling supplies in the CCP system was studied. With the dramatic development of data centers, the energy management system in data center applications has become significantly important in recent years. A proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC)-driven combined cooling and power (CCP) system with multiple cooling devices was proposed in this paper to fully utilize a natural cold source. Another CCP system without natural cold source utilization was also proposed for comparison. Power and cooling were supplied to these systems with new operational strategies. Based on the proposed model, the operational performance of the two CCP systems was analyzed for a sample data center. The seasonal and annual power supplied, cooling supplies, matching degrees, energy consumption for removing cooling loads, and system efficiencies in the two proposed CCP systems are discussed and analyzed in detail. Results indicate that by using the designed operational strategies, the power and cooling supplies almost matched perfectly with the requirements of the sample data center. The annual energy efficiencies can reach 86.53% and 85.02% for the two proposed CCP systems.