A novel multi-stack fuel cell hybrid system energy management strategy for improving the fuel cell durability of the hydrogen electric Multiple Units

ABSTRACT

To improve the fuel cell durability of the hydrogen Electric Multiple Units, this paper proposes a novel multi-stack fuel cell hybrid system energy management strategy in consideration of fuel cell degradation. The top layer of the method distributes the power of fuel cells and lithium batteries reasonably according to the Equivalent Consumption Minimization Strategy, and adjusts the fuel cell power through the feedback power regulation module. The bottom layer distributes the power of different stacks according to the degradation degree. The proposed layering method improves the durability of fuel cells by reducing the fuel cell degradation degree. The hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) experiments results show that, compared with the traditional equivalent hydrogen consumption minimum energy management strategy, the proposed method is effective in lowering the degradation degree and operating pressure of the fuel cell by 25.77% and 35.73% respectively.

KEYWORDS:

• Fuel cell
• electric-hydrogen hybrid system
• fuel cell degradation
• energy management
• hardware-in-the-loop

Acknowledgements

This paper is supported by The State Key Laboratory of Heavy duty and Express High-power Electric Locomotive.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

Conceptualization, D.J. and Y.L.; methodology, D.J.; software, D.J.; Writing – original draft, P.F. and C.G.; Project administration and funding acquisition, Y.T.; validation, D.J., Y.L., P.F., and H.H. Writing – review and editing, D.J. and Y.T. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the The State Key Laboratory of Heavy duty and Express High-power Electric Locomotive.