2007 Volume 5 Issue 2 Pages 1049-1053
This paper proposes the extend mileage of electric wheelchair using a hybrid system consisting of Ni-MH battery aided by fuel cell as its drive source. Driving power sources in the trial electric wheelchair using Ni-MH battery with a 24V, 6.7Ah and fuel cell with a 24V, 300W is aided by hydrogen storage material filled-up to capacity of 70NL with a pressure of 1MPa. At present, running characteristics of electric wheelchair using in-wheel brushless dc motor as the drive system measures the current and voltage supplied to it, and investigates the mileage when that is run at a specific speed. As a result, at a speed of about 4.3km/h, averaging values of generating current and voltage of hybrid system are 2.7A and 24V, respectively. Mileage of electric wheelchair using a hybrid system is improved to about 1.5 times comparing with Ni-MH battery only.