Development, analysis and assessment of fuel cell and photovoltaic powered vehicles

This paper deals with a new hybridly powered photovoltaic- PEM fuel cell - Li-ion battery and ammonia electrolyte cell integrated system (system 2) for vehicle application and is compared to another system (system 1) that is consisting of a PEM fuel cell, photovoltaic and Li-ion battery. The paper aims to investigate the effect of adding photovoltaic to both systems and the amount of hydrogen consumption/production that could be saved/generated if it is implemented in both systems. These two systems are analyzed and assessed both energetically and exergetically. Utilizing photovoltaic arrays in system 1 is able to recover 177.78 g of hydrogen through 1 h of continuous driving at vehicle output power of 98.32 kW, which is approximately 3.55% of the hydrogen storage tank used in the proposed systems. While, using the same photovoltaics arrays, system 2 succeeds to produce 313.86 g of hydrogen utilizing the ammonia electrolyzer system 2 appeared to be more promising as it works even if the car is not in operation mode. Moreover, the hydrogen produced from the ammonia electrolyzer can be stored onboard, and the liquefied ammonia can be used as a potential source for feeding PEM fuel cell with hydrogen. Furthermore, the effects of changing various system parameters on energy and exergy efficiencies of the overall system are investigated.