الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Factors such as global warming, dwindling fossil fuel reserves, and energy security concerns combine to indicate that a replacement for the internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle is needed. Fuel cell vehicles have the potential to address the problems surrounding the ICE vehicle without imposing any significant restrictions on vehicle performance, driving range, or refueling time. Moreover, the fuel cell vehicles have benefits such as high efficiency, zero harmful emissions, and a potentially renewable fuel. Therefore, the present research work on the fuel cell vehicle (FCV) is aimed at investigating performance of the FCV and assessing its costs. The FCV consists of the propulsion system, which consists of fuel cell stack, interleaved boost converter (IBC) and brushless DC (BLDC) motor. This is in addition to the chassis, body, hydrogen tank, gear transmission and other auxiliaries parts. The Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) along with the FCVbased- PEMFC are modeled in the present thesis. This is in addition to interleaved boost converter modeling and harmonic mitigation using power filters. The cost estimation of the FCV is compared with that of the conventional ICE vehicle. The literature review chapter focused on the components of fuel cell vehicle with a brief survey of the most promising topologies of fuel cell. The advantages of fuel cell vehicles are listed in this chapter as well as the strategies of fuel cell vehicle automakers are described. Some basics of DC-DC converter, BLDC motor and the APF are also reviewed. Due to high levels of harmonics in the proposed FCV system, passive and active power filters have been designed to mitigate system harmonics . With the use of active power filter, the total harmonic distortion (THD) of BLDC motor current drops down to , which lies within the IEEE allowable limits. The cost of FCV components including fuel cell stack, IBC, BLDC motor, and hydrogen tank is assessed as equal to respectively. The cost of the proposed FCV is almost the same as that of the hybrid one ($24,363 for FCV and $24,050 for hybrid vehicle) and still far above the conventional ICE vehicle price ($15,805 for ICE vehicle). |