Fuel Cell Powertrain Power Management with Super Capacitor

Nowadays, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and economic considerations leads to the seek for cleaner and sustainable solutions. The exponential rise of number of on road vehicles in recent past lead to environmental problems to alarming situation due to increasing greenhouse gases. In 2020, global Co2 emissions was 33908 Mt Co2 & out of which 7153 Mt Co2 from transportation sector. Hydrogen fuel based internal combustion engine & fuel cell can lead the way for the global goal to achieve zero greenhouse gas emission. Though hydrogen fuel cell usage in the mobility application has its own limitation due to its slow dynamic response to the driver demanded power. In order to sync with transient and dynamic demand behavior of vehicles, Powertrain needs to deliver instant drive torque to the wheels, which is difficult to achieve from fuel cell powertrain (fuel cell + HV Battery Pack) alone. Our research emphasis on research of Fuel cell & Super capacitor hybrid power source to deliver transient and dynamic power supply to electric powertrain. The super capacitor is arranged in parallel to the fuel cell to overcome the limitation of fuel cell. The study proposes different use case scenarios and optimized power management strategies to meet the dynamic vehicle requirements. The use case scenarios are such that they replicate the actual vehicle condition where the optimization is required for the power management. Vehicle charge power mode and discharge power mode is considered for our research. The three major test case scenarios are explored, like vehicle start, Acceleration & regeneration for this paper.