JRC week two update: The last week of testing at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Petten has past and with it has our fuel cell testing time. In the second week of testing we were able to achieve a lot. After having problems with our air supply (malfunctioning supercharger) in the first week, we altered our test plans slightly and used the external air supply from JRC. This wasnt without problems and new, additional challenges since we struggled to get our fuel cell system stable using the external air supply unit with its independent, separate control system. However, within one day we managed to cure the controls from its teething problems and accomplished to get our fuel cell back to a stable power output of 30kW. In the following days everything progressed smoothly and we managed to determine several set-points, gather a lot of system data and comfortably ramp up our fuel cell power output to 91kW. Unfortunately, after 91 kW we started run into the limitations of the external air supply. We expect to be able to reach our goal of 100kW by the time we implement our own working supercharger again. During the two weeks of testing at JRC we gathered large amounts of useful data and learned a lot about our fuel cell, our balance of plant (BOP) and its behaviour. We discovered that the re-circulation pump (part of the BOP) used more power then we had previously expected and we are currently looking into solutions to bring down its power consumption. Furthermore we are busy with the revision of our air supply system, the supercharger. Although we did not reach the full power output of 100kW, we are all extremely happy with the results and we were able to collect a lot of data points for analysis. We would like to thank the Joint Research Centre and its dedicated and enthusiastic employees for their support, help and the unique chance to test at such an excellent and advanced Institution.
Posted on: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 09:14:16 +0000
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