Kevin B. Martin

Electricity and hydrogen as energy vectors for transportation vehicles

Abstract: Electrification of road vehicles will play a key role in the development of lower carbon transport solutions and a longer term technology is likely to include the use of hydrogen as an energy vector. This chapter discusses industrial methods for the large-scale production and distribution of hydrogen together with the major sources of electricity production. The chemistry of hydrogen production methods is reviewed together with the challenges of storage, distribution and transport usage. Different sources of renewable electricity are discussed including wind, wave, nuclear and solar.

Supervisory control development of a fuel cell plug-in hybrid electric vehicle

The design of a supervisory control system for a fuel cell plug-in hybrid vehicle is similar to that of an internal combustion engine plug-in hybrid. However, the desire to maximize the all electric range is lessened due to reduced petroleum usage and tail-pipe emissions of the fuel cell system. This paper presents a control strategy which uses a fuel cell at a low but highly efficient power level during charge depleting operation. Once the charge sustaining operating conditions are achieved the fuel cell system switches to a higher average power operating point. The developed control strategy is simulated using the Powertrain System Analysis Toolkit (PSAT).