Real Time Optimizer for energy efficient Thermal Management of a Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle

One of the major goals of the automotive industry is to improve vehicular fuel efficiency and performance with much lesser percentages of harmful tailpipe emissions. One of the major technologies includes fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV). Various advantages of fuel cells including reliability, simplicity, quietness of operation, and low pollution have made them an attractive potential candidate for providing automotive power. Even with numerous benefits, fuel cell still have more potential to become more efficient during its operation as, when put inside a vehicle, many auxiliary components act as a parasitic load on the fuel cell system. Thermal management system is one of such system which is critical for working of the fuel cell yet takes large amount of electrical power to operate. At high power operation entire thermal management system can draw up to fifteen percent of total power generated by the fuel cell. This paper discusses on a real time optimizer which controls the various pumps, fans in the vehicle to maintain the temperature of fuel cell. The optimizer considers various inputs such as the current heat generated by fuel cell, current vehicle speed, current & target temperature of the fuel cell system and ambient temperature. The optimizer follows a dual-mode approach to balance need for quick response while maintaining stable long-term operation. The results highlight potential of this optimizer to operate with lowest possible electrical power for cooling components while providing highest possible cooling effect. Keywords: Fuel Cell, Thermal Management, Optimization, Energy Efficiency