Fletcher_energies-13-05889-v2.pdf (1.24 MB)
The effect of fuel cell and battery size on efficiency and cell lifetime for an L7e fuel cell hybrid vehicle
journal contribution
posted on 2020-11-24, 13:59 authored by Tom Fletcher, Kambiz EbrahimiKambiz EbrahimiThe size of the fuel cell and battery of a Fuel Cell Hybrid Electric Vehicle (FCHEV) will heavily affect the overall performance of the vehicle, its fuel economy, driveability, and the rates of fuel cell degradation observed. An undersized fuel cell may experience accelerated ageing of the fuel cell membrane and catalyst due to excessive heat and transient loading. This work describes a multi-objective design exploration exercise of fuel cell size and battery capacity comparing hydrogen fuel consumption, fuel cell lifetime, vehicle mass and running cost. For each system design considered, an individually optimised Energy Management Strategy (EMS) has been generated using Stochastic Dynamic Programming (SDP) in order to prevent bias to the results due to the control strategy. It has been found that the objectives of fuel efficiency, lifetime and running cost are largely complimentary, but degradation and running costs are much more sensitive to design changes than fuel efficiency and therefore should be included in any optimisation. Additionally, due to the expense of the fuel cell, combined with the dominating effect of start/stop cycling degradation, the optimal design from an overall running cost perspective is slightly downsized from one which is optimised purely for high efficiency.
Funding
Doctoral Training Centre in Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and their Applications
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Find out more...History
School
- Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
Department
- Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering
Published in
EnergiesVolume
13Issue
22Publisher
MDPI AGVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© The authorsPublisher statement
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by MDPI under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Acceptance date
2020-11-09Publication date
2020-11-11Copyright date
2020eISSN
1996-1073Publisher version
Language
- en