The 2nd International Conference on New Energy and Future Energy System
September 22nd-25th, 2017, Kunming, Yunnan, China
Speech title: Hydrogen fuel cell engine: control technologies and its challenging
Abstract: Hydrogen fuel cell engines (FCE) are regarded as an important power sources in the future for electric vehicles. Compared to an internal combustion engine (ICE), an FCE has advantages of high efficiency, low noise and zero emission. It is especially important for big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, which suffers great air pollutions and traffic problems.
An FCE is composed of several sub-systems, e.g., an air supply system on the cathode side, a hydrogen supply system on the anode, a cooling and heating system, a humidifier system that is usually integrated with the anode or cathode systems, and a power conditioning system that controls the output power. Such a system needs a distributed control system to coordinate the work of different sub-systems.
There have been several kinds of FCEs in the world nowadays, e.g., FCSs from Toyota, Nissan, GM, Ballard and HydroGenics. In China, there are also several kinds of FCSs, such as FCEs from Sunrise and Sinohytec. Each of them has unique characteristics. This presentation will start from the basic working principle of a hydrogen fuel cell engine. A distributed control system which includes sensors, actuators, communication networks and controllers will be detailed presented. The multi-variable control problem within it, and several typical control algorithms that have been applied, will be introduced. The development of control technologies, as well as the challenging in next generations, will be introduced.
This presentation is given on the basis of the author long-term experience in the academic research and key technologies development on fuel cell engines. An FCE is a typical multi-physics system, which needs different areas of knowledge to understand and to control it. This presentation gives a guideline for students and engineers who are interested in these technologies and want to contribute themselves to this area.
