Active Management of Energy Source in a Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle Considering Air Contaminants along the Route

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">One of the major goals of the automotive industry is to improve vehicular fuel efficiency and performance with much lesser percentages of harmful tailpipe emissions. One of the major technologies includes fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV). Fuel cell electric vehicle can positively affect the transportation industry with regards to increase in the greenhouse gas emission, air pollution. A proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell that is widely used in commercial vehicles takes hydrogen and oxygen to generate the electricity. Hydrogen stored either in liquid or compressed gas, is supplied from anode end and oxygen from atmosphere is supplied from cathode end. The atmospheric air, which enters fuel cell, also contains pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NO_x), Sulphur oxides (SO_x), carbon monoxides and dioxides (CO, CO₂), methane, ammonia etc. Operation of fuel cell in a geographic region, where the concentration of pollutants mentioned is significant leads to adsorption on the catalysts surfaces and in effect greatly suppresses the oxygen reduction reaction. In other words, the effective impedance level of the electrode increases. This causes a voltage drop and overall reduces the power output of the fuel cell. The effect of this adsorption takes a huge amount of time to recover the performance of fuel cell, and in some cases, it can cause permanent damage. The paper proposes an active energy management strategy considering air pollution levels along the route. The selection of the energy source, i.e., battery or fuel cell, also depends on route attributes and weather conditions. The approach significantly reduces the energy generated by the fuel cell by 77% in the highest pollutant region, reflecting decreased air consumption in polluted regions. This not only enhances fuel cell performance but also contributes to environmental sustainability.</div></div>