DEVELOPMENT OF A FUEL CELL HYBRID SCOOTER EQUIPPED WITH AN INTEGRATED METAL HYDRIDE TANK

Hydrogen powered vehicles based on fuel cells are considered one of the possible solutions, the most promising, to the current mobility problems. Especially in urban environments the need of silent, non-pollutant, high efficient vehicles is becoming greater and greater. One of the possible solutions is a fuel cell based scooter coupling the advantages of individual mobility (flexibility, efficiency, etc.) and hydrogen technologies (environmental impact, sustainability, efficiency, etc.). The paper describes the design and manufacturing of a fuel cell scooter. The proposed solution is based on hybrid architecture: the fuel cell (200 W, 20 cells) works in parallel with a battery pack (7.2 Ah). The parallel operation is based on a DC/DC converter used to boost and stabilise the fuel cell voltage at the battery level: the fuel cell starts to work as soon as the battery pack voltage became lower than a fixed value. The hydrogen storage is made trough the use of a hydride vessel (50 Nliters) allowing more than one hour of operation in maximum acceleration mode. The thermal energy co generated by the fuel cell is used to warm the vessel in order to optimise the hydrogen desorbtion. The air supply system consists in a blower allocated directly on the fuel cell and it is controlled by the motor power request. The scooter is currently under test at the Hydrogen System Laboratory either in outdoor and indoor applications. Considering the way to hydrogen society, the proposed scooter can be an important step also in terms of public acceptance.