Waste heat utilization performance verification of Heat Exchanger Only Thermal Management System for fuel cell vehicle

Abstract

Utilizing waste heat from fuel cells effectively has the potential to increase total energy utilization efficiency. Waste heat usage is a developing area of thermal management for fuel cell vehicles (FCV). The efficiency of heat exchange has not been taken into account, and conventional fuel cell vehicles do not properly utilize waste heat. This study recommends a heat exchanger only thermal management system (HEOS) and conducts thermodynamic modeling and controlled quantity simulation based on global optimization in order to evaluate the effectiveness of waste heat utilization in the proposed system structure. In order to meet the heating requirements of fuel cell vehicles in low temperature conditions, the system eliminates positive temperature coefficients (PTC) and utilizes an effective heat exchanger. By specifying an objective function, an optimization issue, and a global optimization technique using dynamic programming, the global optimal fuel cell energy-saving control effect is attained. The findings demonstrate that the suggested fuel cell vehicle thermal management system is present under all three working situations, in contrast to the waste heat utilization system, in which the PTC and heat exchanger simultaneously heat the passenger compartment. The waste heat utilization rose by 29.7%, 31.2%, and 31.1%, respectively, as compared to heat exchanger and PTC combined thermal management system (HEPCS), and the total hydrogen consumption was reduced by around 4.27%, 2.39%, and 3.92%, respectively.