Optimizing hydrogen utilization in Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicles: Modeling fuel cell systems and managing energy between batteries and fuel cells

In this study, we focus on modeling the dynamic system of a fuel cell hybrid vehicle, particularly the stack, to enhance hydrogen utilization efficiency through an adapted energy management control strategy. The fuel cell system is modeled for each balance of plant (BOP) component. In the modeling of the stack, it was designed to enable the calculation of water behavior inside gas diffusion layer. After modeling this vehicle system, we tested three different driving strategies across five driving cycles: HWFET, FTP-75, UDDS, NEDC, and WLTP. The strategies explored were constant power, baseline, and target State of Charge (SOC) change. Our findings reveal that the target SOC change strategy resulted in the lowest hydrogen consumption, with minimal variation in battery SOC at the beginning and end of the drive. Specifically, this strategy led to a hydrogen consumption reduction of approximately 24% in low-load conditions (FTP-75, UDDS, NEDC) and 10% in high-load conditions (HWFET, WLTP).