Impact of Optimal Fuel Cell Management System on Fuel Cell Hybrid Electric Vehicle Efficiency

Fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles (FCHEVs) play an important role in driving the transition towards more environment-friendly transportation and electric mobility. Their powertrain efficiency hinges on the effective distribution of power demands between the fuel cell (FC) and the battery, facilitated by an Energy Management System (EMS). In the literature, diverse strategies are utilized to handle the power allocation within the FCHEV. Unlike existing work, this paper breaks new ground by incorporating a Fuel Cell Management System (FCMS) into the EMS. This FCMS improves FC performance by simultaneously monitoring FC operational conditions: temperature and oxygen excess ratio. The proposed optimal FCMS is combined with the Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) EMS and simulated across urban, suburban, and highway driving scenarios. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, by achieving up to 4% enhancement in the overall efficiency.