Fuel Cell Vehicle Thermal Management System Simulation in Contrast to Conventional Vehicle Concepts

The wide experience in thermal management for vehicles with combustion engine based drive trains could be used to optimize fuel cell driven vehicles. For the simulation task, 1d software KULI was used. By comparing two vehicles of similar size, one with combustion engine the other with a fuel cell, differences in the thermal behaviour were highlighted. For two typical operation points, relevant for the layout of cooling systems, the vehicles were compared. Additionally, the behaviour for a transient cycle with significant fractions of high load was verified. To reach temperature levels of the fuel cell vehicle the heat exchange area had to be increased by 70% compared to the conventional vehicle. Also water flow and fan speed had to be adapted.