Analysis of Heavy-Duty requirements and mission profiles to develop ASTs for PEMFC

Abstract

Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are a key technology for the decarbonization of road transportation. The use of hydrogen powered vehicles in all the ranges of vehicles weight appears as promising solution to maintain driving range and refueling time competitive to traditional combustion engine vehicles1. While the implementation of PEMFC in Light-Duty Vehicles is already in commercialization phase, its introduction in Heavy-Duty Vehicles (HDV) has been addressed only recently. Among the HDV, Long-haul vehicles (ca. 40 t) stand out as 85% of EU road freight transport2. Power and operation requirements for PEMFC-HDV induce changes in the components which have to reach up to 30,000 h of operation3. Additionally, operation conditions need to be adapted to comply with truck requirements (temperature, pressure, voltage level…)1. In this work, power requirements in Long-haul HDV are derived from several representative driving cycles obtained from different sources (DriveCAT4 and VECTO5). For this purpose, a Python software tool was developed. Using the power required in the electric motor to fulfil the cycle, different operation and hybridization strategies between PEMFC and energy storage system (e.g., a battery) are used to obtain the PEMFC stack power demand as well as the operation conditions along the driving cycle. From the obtained profiles, critical operation conditions are identified, categorized and enumerated to identify stressors that impact real life operation in HDV and can be used to develop ASTs.