Fuel Cell Battery Hybrid Vehicle Research Articles

Life cycle assessment of solid oxide fuel cell vehicles in a natural gas producing country; comparison with proton electrolyte fuel cell, battery and gasoline vehicles

In this paper, the technical and economic feasibility of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell-Battery Hybrid Vehicles is studied based on Iran conditions and compared against Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell (PEFC) Vehicles, Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) and Gasoline Vehicles. Existence of enormous resources of natural gas and its extensive distribution and transmission lines in Iran are a great opportunity to develop SOFC-Battery hybrid vehicles fueled by natural gas. In this paper, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions and life cycle cost were analyzed. We ranked different vehicles in 2021 and forecast their ranking for 2030, which is crucial for policymaking and technology support. The results show the well to wheel energy consumption of SOFC-Battery hybrid vehicle per km in 2021 is nearly same as PEFC FCEVs and 1060 kJ and 560 kJ less than gasoline and battery electric vehicle respectively. The well to wheel emission of SOFC FCEVs in 2021 is a little less than PEFC FCEV and 50% and 28% lower, respectively than gasoline vehicle and BEV. It is expected that the life cycle cost per km on a charge of SOFC hybrid vehicles with equal driving range will be the best choice in 2030 with 23.9 cents per km.

Energy efficiency improvement of intelligent fuel cell/battery hybrid vehicles through an integrated management strategy

This paper investigates an integrated energy management strategy (IMS) to improve energy efficiency of proton exchange membrane fuel cell (FC) system in intelligent fuel cell/battery hybrid vehicles (FCHVs). Unlike other similar works which solely control output current from the FC system, stack temperature regulation is added in this research due to its impact on FC output power performance. For liquid-cooled FC systems, joint management of FC current and stack temperature is more difficult than air-cooled FC systems due to complicated thermal management systems. To address this, firstly, a control-oriented integrated model is established to provide the foundation for controller design. For the purpose of decreasing the strong nonlinearity of integrated model, the heat generation term is parameterized with a polynomial function. Secondly, in order to determine reference trajectories for controller, a data set consisting of nearly optimal operation points (FC current and stack temperature) is constructed offline, which provides reference trajectories based on simple rules in real time. Finally, a contraction-based control (CBC) approach is utilized to regulate FC current and stack temperature jointly. The bounded convergence between system states and reference trajectories is guaranteed by contraction theory. The effectiveness of the proposed IMS is validated via MATLAB simulation.

Integrated Motion and Powertrain Predictive Control of Intelligent Fuel Cell/Battery Hybrid Vehicles

This article considers intelligent fuel cell/battery hybrid vehicles (FCHVs) that can make autonomous decisions at both the vehicle and powertrain levels. Since the vehicle and powertrain level dynamics are inherently integrated, we propose an integrated motion and powertrain model predictive control approach for intelligent FCHVs by jointly optimizing the vehicle acceleration and fuel cell current. The control goals are to achieve vehicle mobility, minimal hydrogen consumption, and battery state-of-charge maintenance within system constraints. The main challenge in an integrated control is that the electric motor can operate in both propelling and generating modes coupling with vehicle and powertrain states. This hybrid operation is handled by the mixed logical dynamical modeling resulting in a mixed integer nonlinear control problem. To relieve the possible heavy computational burden, two simplification approaches are proposed: hierarchical control and successive linearizations. Two standard driving cycles and a typical vehicle cruising scenario are employed to test the effectiveness of the proposed modeling and control algorithms. Simulation results show that the hierarchical linear control is more suitable for real-time applications with comparable control performance with that of the integrated control. However, additional constraints must be carefully designed to compensate for the ignored coupling dynamics and constraints.

Dynamic analysis of a PEM fuel cell hybrid system with an on-board dimethyl ether (DME) steam reformer (SR)

Low-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) acts as a promising energy source due to the non-pollution and high-energy density. However, as hydrogen supply is a major constraint limiting the wide spread of fuel cell vehicles, a dimethyl ether (DME)-steam on-board reformer (SR) based on catalytic reforming via a catalytic membrane reactor with a channel structure is a possible solution to a direct hydrogen supply. The DME-SR reaction scheme and kinetics in the presence of a catalyst of CuO/ZnO/Al2O3+ZSM-5 are functions of the temperature and hydrocarbon ratio in the hydrogen-reforming reaction. An electric heater is provided to keep the temperature at a demanded value to produce hydrogen. As there is no available analysis tool for the fuel cell battery hybrid vehicle with on-board DME reformer, it is necessary to develop the tool to study the dynamic characteristics of the whole system. Matlab/Simulink is utilized as a dynamic simulation tool for obtaining the hydrogen production and the power distribution to the fuel cell. The model includes the effects of the fuel flow rate, the catalyst porosity, and the thermal conductivity of different subsystems. A fuel cell model with a battery as a secondary energy storage is built to validate the possible utilization of on-board reformer/fuel cell hybrid vehicle. In consideration of time-delay characteristic of the chemical reactions, the time constant obtained from the experiment is utilized for obtaining dynamic characteristics. The hydrogen supplied by the reformer and the hydrogen consumed in the PEMFC prove that DME reformer can supply the adequate hydrogen to the fuel cell hybrid vehicle to cope with the required power demands.

Basal Study on Power Control Strategy for Fuel Cell/Battery Hybrid Vehicle

In order to enhance the fuel economy of hybrid vehicle and increase the mileage of continuation of journey, the power control strategy (PCS) is as significant as component sizing in achieving optimal fuel economy of the fuel cell/battery hybrid vehicle (FCBHV). The models of FCBHV structure and optimal power control strategy are developed by electric vehicle simulation software ADVISOR which uses a hybrid backward/forward approach. The results demonstrate that the proposed control strategy can satisfy the power requirement for two standard driving cycles and achieve the power distribution among various power sources. The comprehensive comparisons with the power tracking controller (PTC) which is wide adopted in ADVISOR verify that the proposed control strategy has better rationality and validity in terms of fuel economy and dynamic property in two standard driving cycles. Therefore, the proposed strategy will provide a novel approach for the advanced power control system of FCBHV.

Hybrid Model Predictive Power Management of A Fuel Cell-Battery Vehicle

This paper considers optimal power management of a fuel cell-battery hybrid vehicle (FCHV) powertrain having three distinct modal configurations (modes): electric motor propelling/battery discharging, propelling/charging, and generating/charging. Each mode has a distinct set of dynamics and constraints. Using component dynamical/algebraic models appropriate to power flow management, the paper develops a supervisory-level switched system model as an interconnection of subsystems. Given the model, the paper sets forth a hybrid model predictive control strategy based on a minimization of a performance index (PI) that trades off tracking and fuel economy in each operational mode. Specifically, the PI trades off velocity tracking error, battery state of charge variance, and electric drive and hydrogen fuel usages while penalizing frictional braking to encourage regenerative braking. The optimization is performed using an embedded system model and collocation with matlab's fmincon to compute mode switches and continuous time controls. The methodology avoids the computational complexity of alternate approaches based on, e.g., mixed integer programming. Projection methods for approximating the switched system solution from the embedded solution are empirically evaluated. To demonstrate the methodology, an example of a FCHV is simulated using three standard velocity driving profiles: a sawtooth profile with a hill climb, the EPA urban dynamic driving schedule, and the New European Driving Cycle. Also, drive cycle fuel usage is compared to that from the Equivalent Consumption Minimization Strategy.

An experimental and analytical comparison study of power management methodologies of fuel cell–battery hybrid vehicles

The implementation of fuel cell vehicles requires a supervisory control strategy that manages the power distribution between the fuel cell and the energy storage device. Some of the current problems with power management strategies are: fuel efficiency optimization methods require prior knowledge of the driving cycle before they can be implemented, the impact on the fuel cell and battery life cycle are not considered and finally, there are no standardized measures to evaluate the performance of different control methods. In addition to that, the performances of different control methods for power management have not been directly compared using the same mathematical models. The proposed work will present a different optimization approach that uses fuel mass flow rate instead of fuel mass consumption as the cost function and thus, it can be done instantaneously and does not require knowledge of the driving cycle ahead of time. Also this study presents an experimental approach to validate the mathematical simulation results.

Integrating vendors into cooperative design practices

This paper describes a new approach to cooperative design using distributed, off-the-shelf design components. The ultimate goal is to enable assemblers to rapidly design their products and perform simulations using parts that are offered by a global network of suppliers. The obvious way to realise this goal would be to transfer desired component models to the client computer. However, in order to protect proprietary data, manufacturers are reluctant to share their design models without non-disclosure agreements, which can take in the order of months to put in place. Due to bandwidth limitations, it is also impractical to keep the models at the manufacturer site and do simulations by simple message passing. To deal with these impediments in e-commerce the modular distributed modelling (MDM) methodology is leveraged, which enables transfer of component models while hiding proprietary implementation details. MDM methodology with routine design (RD) methods are augmented to realise a platform (RD-MDM) that enables automatic selection of secured off-the-shelf design components over the Internet, integration of these components in an assembly, running simulations for design testing and publishing the approved product model as a secured MDM agent. This paper demonstrates the capabilities of the RD-MDM platform on a fuel cell–battery hybrid vehicle design example.

Prospects for the application of fuel cells in electric vehicles

For a hybrid vehicle the use pattern has large effect on the vehicle design. If the vehicle is to be used extensively on the motorway then a continuous high power is required. For the case of a fuel cell battery hybrid vehicle this would require a large fuel cell ( > 30 kW) to meet the sustained high power demand. The current high materials and fabrication cost of most fuel cells prohibits the commercial development of such a system. Consequently if fuel cell vehicles are to enter a ‘clean car’ market, earlier rather than later, alternative configurations must be sought and compromises in terms of performance are inevitable.