Modeling and characterization of ultra capacitor for fuel cell vehicle simulator

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is the modeling and the characterization of a hybrid power source combining ultra capacitors and proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). The related theoretical study is validated through experimental measurements. After establishing the ultra capacitor model, a brief study of a PEMFC is presented taking into account the fuel starvation phenomenon which causes serious problems during the operating modes where the load changes rapidly, such as vehicle accelerations. To validate this study a PEMFC real time simulator has been build using dSpace device. Then, this tool has been used to demonstrate the main role of ultra capacitors in terms of preventing the starvation phenomena in FCEV.

CPU-FPGA based real-time simulation of fuel cell electric vehicle

“…Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) applications can provide a time-saving and safe way for designing the on-line control method, which can be used to evaluate FCEV performance before its commercial spreading around the world. However, few researches [19][20][21][22] are focused on the real-time simulation of the FCEV. Since a typical FCEV system couples a high non-linear characteristic, and the multi-physical fuel cell dynamic performance among different domains can make the system hard to be executed in real-time.…”

“…The control and management algorithms are discussed in detail in the paper, whereas the converter and the machine are not discussed. A PEMFC vehicle real-time platform has been built using dSPACE simulator in [20]. The developed real-time model for FCEV can operate under constant load conditions, and the simulation results are validated by the experiment, whereas the fuel cell model is still of an equivalent circuit one.…”