Abstract
Interest in hydrogen-powered rail vehicles has gradually increased worldwide over recent decades due to the global pressure on reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, technology availability, and multiple options of power supply. In the past, research and development have been primarily focusing on light rail and regional trains, but the interest in hydrogen-powered freight and heavy haul trains is also growing. The review shows that some technical feasibility has been demonstrated from the research and experiments on proof-of-concept designs. Several rail vehicles powered by hydrogen either are currently operating or are the subject of experimental programmes. The paper identifies that fuel cell technology is well developed and has obvious application in providing electrical traction power, while hydrogen combustion in traditional IC engines and gas turbines is not yet well developed. The need for on-board energy storage is discussed along with the benefits of energy management and control systems.
Highlights
With the development of rail transportation, there are mainly two primary systems at present in terms of power supply: one is railway system electrification and the other the on-board diesel engine generated electricity
The model of a locomotive polymer electrolyte membrane FC (PEMFC) system based on a support vector regression (SVR) is presented in [57] to examine the system dynamic behaviours under different operating conditions (PEMFC current, stack temperature, hydrogen pressure, and airflow); a modified particle swarm optimisation (PSO) is used to regulate the hyperparameters of the SVR model for efficiently approximating the dynamic behaviours of the PEMFC and accurately predicting dynamic performance regarding the output voltage and power
Theoretical and experimental studies have identified some potential solutions for clean rail transportation; among them, hydrogen power is one of the promising solutions
Summary
With the development of rail transportation, there are mainly two primary systems at present in terms of power supply: one is railway system electrification (i.e. via overhead catenary or third rail) and the other the on-board diesel engine generated electricity. Of particular interest is the use of hydrogen fuel cells (FC) which is a clean (zero emission) on-board source of electrical power Such alternative clean power systems can be hybridised with traditional diesel engine systems or hybridised with energy storage systems (ESS) consisting of batteries and/or supercapacitors and/or flywheels. As the nations of the world are working together to combat global climate change, rail transportation is seen as an area that can be considered for zero emission or clean technologies It is believed [4, 5] that the first hydrogen locomotive was developed, designed, and demonstrated in the USA in 2002. The present review covers the clean and sustainable rail transportation challenges and their solutions by the potential implementation of hydrogen FC technologies and ESS in rail transportation applications
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