An experimental study of a PEM fuel cell power train for urban bus application

An experimental study was carried out on a fuel cell propulsion system for minibus application with the aim to investigate the main issues of energy management within the system in dynamic conditions. The fuel cell system (FCS), based on a 20 kW PEM stack, was integrated into the power train comprising DC–DC converter, Pb batteries as energy storage systems and asynchronous electric drive of 30kW. As reference vehicle a minibus for public transportation in historical centres was adopted. A preliminary experimental analysis was conducted on the FCS connected to a resistive load through a DC–DC converter, in order to verify the stack dynamic performance varying its power acceleration from 0.5 kW/s to about 4 kW/s. The experiments on the power train were conducted on a test bench able to simulate the vehicle parameters and road characteristics on specific driving cycles, in particular the European R40 cycle was adopted as reference. The “soft hybrid” configuration, which permitted the utilization of a minimum size energy storage system and implied the use of FCS mainly in dynamic operation, was compared with the “hard hybrid” solution, characterized by FCS operation at limited power in stationary conditions. Different control strategies of power flows between fuel cells, electric energy storage system and electric drive were adopted in order to verify the two above hybrid approaches during the vehicle mission, in terms of efficiencies of individual components and of the overall power train. The FCS was able to support the dynamic requirements typical of R40 cycle, but an increase of air flow rate during the fastest acceleration phases was necessary, with only a slight reduction of FCS efficiency. The FCS efficiency resulted comprised between 45 and 48%, while the overall power train efficiency reached 30% in conditions of constant stack power during the driving cycle.