Design of a solar hydrogen refuelling station following the development of the first Croatian fuel cell powered bicycle to boost hydrogen urban mobility

摘要

Hydrogen refuelling stations are important for achieving sustainable hydrogen economy in low carbon transport and fuel cell electric vehicles. The solution presented in this paper provides us with a technology for producing carbon dioxide free hydrogen, which is an approach that goes beyond the existing large-scale hydrogen production technologies that use fossil fuel reforming. Hence, the main goal of this work was to design a hydrogen refuelling station to secure the autonomy of a hydrogen powered bicycle. The bicycle hydrogen system is equipped with a proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack of 300 W, a DC/DC converter, and a metal hydride storage tank of 350 NL of hydrogen. The hydrogen power system was made of readily available commercial components. The hydrogen station was designed as an off-grid system in which the installed proton exchange membrane electrolyzer is supplied with electric energy by direct conversion using photovoltaic cells. With the hydrogen flow rate of 2000 cc min(-1) the hydrogen station is expected to supply at least 5 bicycles to be used in 20 km long city tourist routes. (C) 2018 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.