Preliminary design of a retrofitted ultralight aircraft with a hybrid electric fuel cell power system

Abstract Emission-free aerial propulsion can be achieved with a proton-exchange membrane fuel cell (PEM-FC). In the present investigation, this potential is addressed by designing a hybrid electric power system with fuel cells for an ultralight aerial vehicle to be retrofitted from a conventional fossil-fuelled piston engine configuration. The proposed power system includes a fuel cell, a lithium battery, and a compressed hydrogen vessel. A procedure is proposed to find the size of these components that minimizes the total mass and satisfies the target of a size below 200L and uses performance data of commercially available components. A comparison of different energy management approaches, with and without on-board charge of the battery, is performed. The results underline that the optimal solution is to select the size of the fuel cell to meet the cruise electric request and point out that the maximum discharge current of the battery must be regarded as a key issue in sizing this component, because of the very high take-off power.