How Vitesco Technologies wants to extend the life of fuel cells by optimizing their control

The “Electronic Control for Hydrogen Vehicles (ECH2) ”from Vitesco Technologies – one of the 14 winners of the second Steering Committee for Automotive Research and Mobility (CORAM) – will start the first experiments in early 2022. The goal: to lower the costs of fuel cells by improving the longevity and by optimizing their modularity thanks to the control of auxiliaries.

How to improve the lifespan of fuel cells for hydrogen mobility? This is the question on which Vitesco Technologies, a subsidiary of the Continental equipment manufacturer, is working as part of its “Control Electronics for Hydrogen Vehicles (ECH2)” project. The latter was selected, among 14 other projects, by the Steering Committee for Automotive Research and Mobility (CORAM) to receive part of the 109 million euros budget allocated as part of the recovery plan and should last three years. “In general, aid reaches 30% to 50% of the cost incurred on the project” , indicates Christophe Maréchal, Innovation Director at Vitesco Technologies France.

In partnership with the Laplace laboratory, Ifpen, the industrialists Siemens Industrie Software and Areva Stockage Energie, the consortium aims to develop and produce electronic computers dedicated to piloting fuel cells for light vehicles, buses and trucks. The first experiments should start in early 2022. “We generally work on solutions 5 to 10 years before they are put on the market” , affirms Christophe Maréchal, stressing that the hydrogen mobility market should really emerge in the second half of the decade.

Limit the aging of the fuel cell

The main objective of the ECH2 project is to understand how the fuel cell ages over time and how to limit this aging. “Because the lifespan of fuel cells is not at the state of the art in relation to uses. All the transient phases (power calls, starting and stopping phases) are the main aging factors of the battery and generates additional costs, for example linked to the platinum content of the battery ”, explains Mr. Maréchal.

Vitesco Technologies engineers will thus experimentally age different batteries fuel on endurance and performance test beds from the start of next year. “With our partners Helion (Alstom subsidiary) and the Laplace laboratory, which has testing facilities” , would like to clarify Christophe Maréchal. “The idea is first of all to model the phenomena which occur at the stack level , he explains. Then we can act at the control-command level, for example by optimizing the power distribution between battery and fuel cell, hydrogen / air stoichiometry, humidification and cooling membrane “, he continues.

Still with the objective of lowering costs, a second axis is studied in the ECH2 project: the modularity of fuel cells to allow scale effects. “We want to be able to identify what would be the best standardized size of fuel cell, which can adapt to light commercial vehicles and heavy vehicles. We also need to understand how to manage this modularity at the level of auxiliaries ”, mentions Mr. Maréchal. Here again, the control electronics play a key role.