ICPC 2007 - 3.

Fuel Cell Based Powertrain Concept for a Municipal Vehicle in the Project hy.muve Project
Dr. Martin Weilenmann Christian Bach Dr. Jean-Yves Favez Philippe Novak
EMPA - Materials Science & Technology

Dr. Felix Bchi

Electrochemistry Laboratory PSI
Copyright 2007 AVL List GmbH

ABSTRACT
Municipal vehicles (road sweepers) are an ideal platform for the early introduction of fuel cell power trains for various technical and non-technical reasons, among them: for most of the time (in cleaning mode) these vehicles run at low loads, where fuel cells are highly efficient. As operation is local, a small hydrogen infrastructure is sufficient. As the first steps in the hy.muve project (hydrogendriven municipal vehicle), the drive train of the existing diesel hydraulic road sweeper is analyzed and the power needs of the different consumers are quantified. Based on these requirements the architecture of the fuel cell-based electric vehicle is outlined and optimized by simulations with the goal of doubling the overall efficiency.

infrastructure is needed. They are operated by technical staff, with greater understanding of the new technology compared to fuel cell passenger cars. Packaging is not critical, i.e. the space allowance and weight of the fuel cell system are not as limited as in the case of passenger cars. The costs of the power train relative to the overall costs of the vehicle are small in comparison with passenger cars. Thus, even with fuel cell system prices not in line with the market, reasonable extra costs occur over the lifetime of the vehicle. Vehicles without exhaust emissions (except water vapor) may additionally be used indoor, for instance in train stations, malls etc. Local authorities, as the typical users of such vehicles, are under a certain degree of political pressure to use innovative and environmentfriendly technology.

INTRODUCTION
Because of a shortage of fossil fuels and due to global warming. a series of alternative propulsion systems and regenerative fuels are under development. Hydrogen-driven fuel cells are among the most forward-looking of these technologies. Municipal vehicles (road sweepers) are an ideal platform for the early introduction of fuel-cell power trains for various technical and non-technical reasons: most of the time (in cleaning mode) these vehicles run at low loads at which fuel cells show high efficiency. Transfer journeys alone create high loads for short periods of the day. These vehicles are used locally and are always parked overnight at the same location, so that no distributed fueling

Figure 1

Municipal vehicle model to be equipped with a fuel cell drive train.

Moreover, the application of fuel cells in a vehicle with permanently running auxiliaries such as the vacuum-cleaner ventilator and the brushes is a new research field providing interesting questions that need to be solved. For these reasons the authors launched the hy.muve project, hydrogen driven municipal vehicle, where a road sweeper is to be equipped with a hybrid fuel cell power train from Proton Motor. The road sweeper chosen is one of the class of 2 m3 trash bin size vehicles and comes from the European market leader in this sector (Figure 1). It has a base of 3.8 x 1.2 meters and an empty weight of 2.6 metric tons. Because of the long period of operation at low loads, where both diesel engines and hydraulics show reduced efficiencies, while fuel cells show their maximal efficiencies, it was specified as a goal of the project that efficiency should be doubled over a normal 8 hour shift. This is combined with the goal that maximally 7.5 kg of hydrogen (300 liters at 350 bars at 15 C) should cover the driving range of the working day. This vehicle is to be used in a demonstration phase of 18 months in various cities in real world conditions. The quality of all parts is thus to be close to series production with corresponding reliability requirements. In this paper the first steps of the project are discussed: the load patterns of a typical working day are defined as a basis for the simulations necessary for the system layout. The existing diesel hydraulic vehicle is analyzed in the next step in order to quantify the power requirement of the various consumers. With this it is possible to sketch the architecture of the fuel cell drive train and to optimize the parameters of the various components.

with compressor and cooling, the power electronics and the motors take up more space than a diesel engine linked to hydraulic pumps and motors. Furthermore, fuel cell systems have significantly higher costs than diesels, as they are produced in small series at present. The layout of the fuel cell drive train therefore needs to be adapted to the real load patterns the vehicle will experience in practice. As such realistic load patterns were not available at the beginning of the project they had to be developed through interviews with users of these vehicles and observation of their work. To obtain realistic and representative drive cycles, a comparison with similar vehicles was made. The working day of these road sweepers consists of long periods in cleaning mode. The driver can preselect the engine rpm at a fixed value. In normal conditions it is set to 1500 rpm. The accelerator pedal, acting only on the hydraulic motor, allows vehicle speeds of 0 to 10 km/h. For typical urban operation on walkways and smaller streets with frequent obstacles a speed of 5 km/h is common. This speed is, of course, interrupted by stops at crossroads. It was assumed here that there would be such interruptions after 200 to 400 m. The rotation of the two brushes fixed to the vehicle and the third one on the articulated arm in front of the vehicles can be set between 0 and 100%. Normally they run at 60% to minimize dust clouds, except for heavy dirt such as gravel after a period of snow, when they are set higher. Similarly, the performance of the vacuum ventilator is selected by defining its rpm. A distinction is made between normal operation at 1700 rpm and advanced operation at 2200 2500 rpm. Since the vehicle weight ranges from 2.6 to 4.5 tons depending on the amount of dirt in the container, the gradient of the streets play an important role in the overall load configuration. A decision was made to use the slope distribution of the province of Zurich (Switzerland) as representative of central Europe (Figure 2).

LOAD PROFILES OF A ROAD SWEEPER IN DRIVING AND CLEANING OPERATION

Since the fuel consumption of working machinery has a marginal impact on overall costs, drive trains of such vehicles are usually designed with a power reserve, and their maximal power is therefore rarely used. This results in high durability even in rough environments, with long service intervals and good acceptance by the operating staff. However, fuel cell electric drives need to be designed for high efficiency for various reasons: hydrogen storage consumes uses up more space than the tank of a liquid fuel. The fuel cell drive train, including the fuel cell stacks, their supply system

1.4
40

Vehicle speed

1.2 1
30 v [km/h]

frequency

0.8 0.6 0.4

20

10

0.2 0 -10

4 Time [h]

-8

-6

-4

-2

10

Loads 2000 1500 slope ventilator speed brush activity

% gradient

Figure 2

Characteristic central European slope distribution

%, rpm, 0.1

1000 500 0 -500 -1000

The periods of cleaning are interrupted by dislocation journeys either at the beginning and end of a shift from the garage to the place of work and back or if the container is full to drive to the next deposition point. Since no average driving pattern for this vehicle was known for these dislocation trips, an average urban truck cycles was chosen from [1. ] (Figure 3). This cycle originates from vehicles with 12 kW/ton power to mass ratio, which is comparable to that of this vehicle.
FIGE city cycle
60 50 v [km/h] 40 30 20 10 0 0 100 200 300 time [s] 400 500 600

4 time [h]

Figure 4

Speed pattern (top) and load patterns (bottom) of a typical working day.

ANALYSIS OF EXISTING DIESELHYDRAULIC POWERTRAIN

The existing vehicles has a diesel hydraulic drive train consisting of three independent hydraulic loops (Figure 5). The first loop drives the front wheels of the vehicles, the second loop goes to the ventilator, while the third loop known as vehicle hydraulics subsequently powers the brushes, brakes, steering and trash bin tipping.
Front wheels Hydraulic motor Hydraulic motor

Tank

Figure 3

Characteristic driving cycle for the municipal vehicle from [1. ].

Diesel Engine

Hydraulic motor

Hydraulic motor

Venti lator

The representative 8 hour shift was chosen to consist of 30 minutes of dislocations each at the beginning and end of a 7 hour cleaning period at 5 km/h with 60% brush activity and 1800 rpm ventilator speed in between (Figure 4). Each of these 3 phases is superimposed with the slope distribution of Figure 2. Figure 5

Hydraulic motor

Hydraulic motor

Brushes

Brakes Batt Steering

Diesel hydraulic layout.

Drive hydraulics As the drive hydraulics will be replaced by an electric motor, its characteristic and output were identified by chassis dynamometer tests (Figure 6). Its efficiency is shown in Figure 7.

The two surfaces represent the two operating modes of driving and cleaning. In driving mode, where the highest power is needed, efficiency is below 62%. Of the 55 kW of the engine a maximum of 28 kW was supplied to the wheels. The electric motor that will drive the vehicle thus needs to be 20 to 28 kW. Ventilator To analyze the power consumption of the ventilator the hydraulic drive was replaced by a 12 kW electric drive to obtain the ventilator characteristic with the vacuum system in its closed real operating configuration.

Figure 8 shows that power rises by the cube of ventilator speed. To fulfill the whole range up to 2500 rpm a 10 kW motor will be necessary. However, at 7 kW at least 2300 rpm is reached and the motor will become significantly smaller, which is important since the motor is placed inside the trash bin. The size of this motor will thus be a tradeoff.
Ventilator power [kW]
14 12 10 P [kW] 8 6 4 2 0 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000

Ventilator speed [1/min]

Figure 8

Ventilator characteristic.

Vehicle hydraulics The third hydraulic loop, supplying brakes, steering, brushes and trash bin tipping, will not be replaced by an electric system, since consumption is low and benefits of higher efficiency would be small. Additionally these benefits would generate high costs since many parts would need to be replaced. This system is therefore left as it is, but will also be dependent on an appropriate electric motor.

Figure 6

Municipal vehicle on chassis dynamometer

P engine [kW]

6 4 2

0 100 75 50 25 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000

brush activity [%]

500

n engine [rpm]

Figure 9 Figure 7 Efficiency of diesel drive train. Left map for cleaning mode, right map for driving mode.

Power for brush operation.

Analysis of operation of the brushes in the diesel vehicles produces the power consumption map in Figure 9. Up to 8 kW is therefore consumed at the shaft of the diesel engine at high rpm. However, since all consumers of this hydraulic loop work well

when its pump is operated at 1000 rpm, the corresponding electric motor only needs to have this speed. Its load will be between 1.7 kW, when all systems are idling, and 4 kW when brushes, steering and brakes are active in parallel.

LAYOUT OF A HYBRID FUEL CELL POWER TRAIN WITH OPTIMAL FUEL EFFICIENCY
General layout For the general drive train layout it was decided that a hybrid solution would be used. Hybrid here means that beside the fuel cell system as power source a battery or super-capacitor will be used for additional energy storage [2. ]. This layout is chosen for the following reasons. The maximal efficiency of a fuel cell system is around one-third of maximal power and falls significantly for lower loads (Figure 10) [3. ]. In cleaning mode the municipal vehicle consumes around 8 kW of power. Thus a fuel cell system of 20 kW would lead to high efficiency. The second energy storage is needed in this sizing of the fuel cell for the rare situations of maximum speed uphill driving, where the drive motor needs more than 20 kW. In addition, fuel cell systems of significantly greater maximal power are larger in general or show reduced efficiencies due to higher compression.
0.7 0.6 0.5 efficiency [-] 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 0 5 10 PFCout [kW] 15 20

Efficiency can be raised even more by recuperation: when the vehicle is driving downhill or decelerating, the drive motor can enter generator mode and deliver power that may be stored. For the time being a battery as second energy source is preferred over super capacitors, since loads over the performance of the fuel cell could occur in certain situations for about 30 minutes. Therefore, the general layout of the power train is chosen as shown in Figure 11.
Front wheels

Tank

Power Battery

El. motor

DC/DC FC system
El. motor Hydraulic pump

El. motor

Ventil ator

Batt

Hydraulic motor

Brushes Brakes Steering

Figure 11 Sketch of fuel cell hybrid drive train. The power will be delivered by the fuel cell and by a power battery. Each of the consumers (driven wheels, ventilator and hydraulics) will be propelled by an individual motor. Layout optimization With the goal of optimizing cruising range under the given performance specifications the different components and the detailed architecture of the DC power distribution are to be optimized by simulation ([4. ], [5. ]). This simulation is performed with a tool that allows quasistatic inverse load simulation. Quasistatic means that the dynamics are discretized in short times steps. Inverse means that the calculus runs from the given loads at the wheels and the other power consumers opposed to the real power flow back to the energy storage systems such as the hydrogen tanks and the battery state of charge. As preprocess, the torque and rpm of the wheels must be calculated from vehicle speed, acceleration, mass and slope via a model that calculates the longitudinal dynamics of the vehicle. In addition, for the power distribution between the battery and fuel cell, a strategy needs to be defined. This strategy obviously has an impact on the overall efficiency. Storage and release of energy from the system power vehicle electric

Figure 10 Fuel cell system efficiency curve Further on, the requirements for the balance-of-plant components are significantly reduced and the fuel cell can work in an optimised mode of operation if it is allowed to run with reduced load dynamics. Thus, an additional energy storage systems that can cover fast load changes improves the overall performance of the total system.

battery is always linked to losses. Thus the more direct the flow of energy is from the fuel cell to the consumers the better. Consequently the load change dynamics for the fuel cell will be a tradeoff between durability and efficiency. The efficiencies of all the components of this electric drive train that do not exist yet obviously need to be assumed before simulation is possible. Reasonable efficiency maps need to be found. The 20 kW motor to power the vehicle, which needs a max speed of 3500 rpm to run 40 km/h but will be used below 500 rpm at loads of less than 2 kW for the cleaning periods in particular needs to show a good part load efficiency. With all these assumptions, first simulation results are shown in Figure 12 and Figure 13.
Loads 40 30 20 Power [kW] 10 0 -10 -20 -30 0 1 2 3 4 Time [h] 5 6 7 8 Ploads Pbattery Pfuelcell

During cleaning, the fuel cell runs between 5 and 8 kW, covering the mean load, while the battery just compensates for short dynamics. For easy and fair evaluation of such simulations the state of charge of the battery is chosen as equal at the start and end of the simulations, which can be achieved by iterations. Here the battery state of charge of 62% is found at both the start and end of the cycle (Figure 13). A total of 53% of the 7.5 kg of hydrogen was used as the main simulation result. This corresponds to roughly 40% of the energy the original diesel vehicles consumes. Although this simulation is based on a list of still uncertain assumptions, the following conclusions may be drawn: The goal of doubling efficiency can be reached A 20 kW fuel cell is sufficient for this vehicle The battery of 20 kW is also sufficient, but its capacity assumed here to be 20 kWh may be reduced.

CONCLUSION
It has been shown that the equipment of such municipal vehicles with a hybrid-fuel-cell-electric power train is an appropriate application for fuel cells, since their long operation at low loads is well suited to the fuel cell characteristics. The goal of doubling efficiency appears possible on the basis of initial simulations. As the next steps, simulations with differing configurations of the DC system and differing size of components will be performed to also optimize endurance. Subsequently, the appropriate components will be manufactured and the vehicle will be built up and tested so that it can enter service within reasonable time.

Figure 12 Electric power need and its distribution. Figure 12 shows the power requirement for the DC bus. During dislocation with quick acceleration and decelerations there are phases in which more than the maximal power of the fuels cell is needed and phases where energy is recovered (negative values). This highlights the need for the battery. The fuel cell runs in this phase with about 12 kW and meets the average power requirement.
Energy consumption 100 90 Stored energy [%] 80 70 60 50 40 hydrogen tank battery

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to thank Proton Motor Fuel Cell GmbH and all the project partners. Thanks are also due to the funders of the project, CCEM Switzerland and the Pilot Region Basel.

4 Time [h]

REFERENCES
1. Handbook Emission Factors for Road Transport. Infras AG, Bern, Versio 2.1, 2004. 2. F.N. Bchi, A. Tsukada, P. Rodatz, O. Garcia, M. Ruge, R. Ktz, M. Brtschi, P. Dietrich ; Fuel Cell Supercap Hybrid Electric Powertrain.

Figure 13 Energy consumption of fuel cell and battery.

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