Prototype design of an extended range electric sightseeing bus with an air-cooled proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack based on a voltage control logic of hydrogen purging

Range Extender (RE) is one means to enhance the driving range of battery electric vehicles by applying an electricity-generating equipment onto the vehicle. Air-cooled PEMFCs are used in some light-duty vehicle for lowering cost and simplify system. In this work, to increase system intergradation and adaptivity, an air-cooled PEMFC with a rated power of 1.1 kW is designed and fabricated. A prototype RE-FCEV with the air-cooled PEMFC serving as a sightseeing bus is designed and tested in a trial run. The PEMFC can extend the vehicle range from 40 km to 70 km. The voltage-based control logic of purging for durable operation is proposed and verified in a trial run. The effectiveness of the voltage-based control logic of purging is proved to maintain a fuel utilization of 97.84% with a sufficient voltage recovery. Based on the trial run results, the driving characteristics of three typical powertrain systems, FCEV, Hybrid battery electric vehicle (HBEV), and RE-FCEV are compared. The RE-FCEV combines the advantages of FCEV and HBEV with providing a stable output of PEMFC, decreasing the hydrogen consumption from 15.504 mol to 11.14 mol and extending the state of charge from 0.871 to 0.94 under the same operating condition.

Automated summary

This study designed and fabricated an air-cooled PEMFC with a rated power of 1.1 kW for a sightseeing bus, which can extend the vehicle range from 40 km to 70 km. A voltage-based control logic of purging was proposed and verified to maintain a fuel utilization of 97.84% with a sufficient voltage recovery. The driving characteristics of three typical powertrain systems, FCEV, HBEV, and RE-FCEV, were compared, and the RE-FCEV combines the advantages of FCEV and HBEV with stable PEMFC output.