Search Results

Starting with NECAR 1 in 1994 DaimlerChrysler has developed a series of fuel cell (FC) concept vehicles to prove the practicability of FC technology in mobile applications. Within the next two years the first buses (2003) and passenger cars (2004) will be given into customer hands indicating the start of a new phase within FC technology development. Among DaimlerChrysler's concept vehicles, Necar 3 and Necar 5 are using methanol as fuel. Methanol is an interesting option, because its storing is much easier than the storage of pure hydrogen. In a rather simple process and at low temperature it can be reformed into a hydrogen rich gas. This paper is dealing with the simulation and the design of methanol FC powertrains with Matlab/Simulink®. The results are fuel consumption with special regard to the operating strategy and the dimensioning of the FC powertrain's components.

The University of Applied Sciences Esslingen (UASE) is a partner in the collaborative EU project PHAEDRUS (high Pressure Hydrogen All Electrochemical Decentralized RefUeling Station) as part of the EU work programme SP1-JTI-FCH.2011.1.8 Research and Development of 700 bar refueling concepts and technologies. The subtask of UASE is the simulation, sizing and analysis of a new concept for a 100 MPa hydrogen refueling station enabling self-sustained infrastructure roll-out for early vehicle deployment volumes, showing the applicability of the electrochemical hydrogen compression (EHC) technology in combination with an on-site anion exchange membrane electrolyser (AEMEC), storage units, precooling and a dispensing system. The electrolyser and the compressor are modeled using the electrochemical equations and the conservation of mole balance.

An optimal energy management system is presented to minimize hydrogen utilization over driving cycles using forward dynamic programming (FDP). The objective is to minimize the cost of hydrogen with the battery cost being used as a parameter to carry out charge-depleting as well as charge-sustaining strategies along with bound enforcement or relaxation. The problem formulation accounts for the power balance at each stage, the power limits, the state-of-charge limits, and the ramp rates constraints of the fuel cell and battery. FDP is selected because it can easily cater for non-linearity in system cost and constraints. It employs heuristic rules to limit the number of states at each stage and is shown to be a very fast algorithm using simple computations and thus may easily lend itself for real-time implementation.