Development of Fuel Cell/Battery Hybrid Vehicle

연료전지/배터리 하이브리드 차량 개발

Fuel cell systems are consisted of various parts, for example fuel cell stack, fuel supplier, electrical converters, controllers and so on. Each components of system should have appropriate specification for their applications as well as simplicity. Because thermal load can be managed simply by using fans without any water cooling system, the air-cooled PEMFC is widely used in sub kW and around 1kW systems. The performance of an air-cooled system is highly dependent on ambient temperature and humidity. In this paper, the air-cooled PEMFC systems are developed and investigated to study the operating characteristics in the aspect of the thermal and water coupled management by the control of the axial fans and compressors. Various experiments were also conducted to get the cell voltage distribution, the relative humidity of the reactant gas and the thermal management by axial cooling fans, which cannot be observed in single cell experiment. After then, as practical applications, portable fuel cell system and a hybrid electric cart were successfully integrated and operated by using this air-cooled stack.