Fuel cell systems have great potential to play a key role in our everyday life. Especially in mobile applications, fuel cells will help to increase system efficiencies, to avoid the release of greenhouse gases and to move to a future sustainable mobility. While fuel cell propulsion systems offer great mid- and long-term perspectives, fuel cell auxiliary power units (APU) have a real chance to reduce fuel consumptions and pollution by avoiding the necessity of truck idling within the next few years. One of the most promising technologies for APUs are diesel reformate PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) fuel cell systems. This technology is supported by the European Commission's Sixth Framework Program for Sustainable Development. Part of this program is the HyTRAN project. 19 partners under the lead of the VOLVO Technology Corporation are developing two innovative, fully integrated and compact fuel cell systems. TENNECO, one of the largest Tier 1 suppliers for emission and ride control systems, is one of the companies that were selected by the European Commission to participate in the HyTRAN consortium to develop fuel cell systems for a future environmentally friendly mobility. TENNECO's main responsibility is the full system integration of the auxiliary power unit, first virtually and in a second step physically. Therefore, TENNECO will apply its expertise from the development, manufacturing and assembling of exhaust systems. Within HyTRAN, TENNECO has developed a self-actuated pressure control valve that is able to control the system pressure with help of the dynamic and static exhaust pressure and without any additional measurement equipment. The concept of this self-actuated pressure control valve is already well proven and tested in mass-produced automotive mufflers that allow the use of similar mufflers under very different conditions. First results showed that it is possible to tune this valve to get a constant backpressure of e.g. approximately 200 mbar. The gained results confirm the feasibility of this self-actuated pressure control valve and its usability in fuel cell systems. It is possible to adjust the parameters more precisely by a fine-tuning of this valve to better meet the system requirements
The HyTRAN project & TENNECO's contribution to the development of fuel cell systems
Das HyTRAN-Projekt und der Beitrag von TENNECO für die Entwicklung von Brennstoffzellensystemen
2006
12 Seiten, 11 Bilder, 8 Quellen
Conference paper
Storage medium
English
Regenerative fuel cell systems for project pathfinder
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