Abstract
Cold start was a major issue for fuel cell vehicles. It is known that if the oxygen or hydrogen supply is limited, the concentration overvoltage increases and the conversion efficiency decreases, thereby increasing the amount of waste heat generation. The rapid start-up operation method takes advantage of this characteristic to increase waste heat generation, directly warming the fuel cell stack more quickly. With this procedure, the system can increase its waste heat generation more than 16.5 times above normal.
This operation method was applied to Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicle (FCHV) with modification of circuit topology and air supply control logic. The FCHV achieved the performance to start in 30 s from a fuel cell temperature of -15 °C and also demonstrated cold start capability in temperatures down to -30 °C.
In this paper, the concept of rapid start-up operation is introduced and examples of vehicle application are explained.
