A Theoretical Study on the Simultaneous Hydrogen Production and Consumption in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell/Battery Electric Vehicles

Abstract

Hybrid electric vehicles are new technologies that will be used in future transportation networks in response to the need for sustainable development of environmentally friendly processes. Some of the energy sources used to develop these vehicles are batteries and proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells (FCs), which cannot guarantee the energy required for life in the long term. Electricity storage systems (ESSs) such as the Ultra Batteries (UBs) are suitable candidates for solving the FC transient response issues. The combination of FCs and UBs in electric vehicles is called Fuel Cell Batteries Electric Vehicles (FCBEVs). In this work, an energy consumption model is adopted to simulate the performance of a FCBEV, by considering the power losses of various components, such as the FC, electric motor, the state of charge (SOC) of the battery, and breaks as well as by implementing a reinforcement-learning energy management strategy (EMS), pursuing this scope through the optimization of the hydrogen fuel consumption. In this regard, the motor prototype, after a transient period of around 2.5 min, was able to reach a number of runs equal to 2000, remaining stable for 10 min before coming down to zero.