Fuel cell controller for automotive applications
A
Prodrive product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
Apr 4, 2008
Bespoke ECU for the control of hydrogen fuel cells is suitable for volume production, with potential for a price around GBP 250 per unit.
Prodrive has developed a new production-ready ECU specifically for the control of hydrogen fuel cells as part of a programme part funded by the Technology Strategy Board.
The unit, called PP150, has been developed in conjunction with fuel cell power systems company, Intelligent Energy, as part of a three year, DTI-funded programme to develop fuel cells for real world applications.
The PP150 is being used to control a 50kW fuel cell system developed by Intelligent Energy.
This is a first for the UK fuel cell industry.
These units use proton exchange membrane technology, making them robust to use in automotive applications.
One of the project's aims was to ensure that the fuel cell could be started at subzero temperatures.
To meet these demands, the control electronics went through a number of design iterations.
Initial development was carried out using Prodrive's rapid prototyping ECU, UP200 which provides a robust, off the shelf hardware platform with built in Simulink compatibility.
This enabled Intelligent Energy to quickly develop the core algorithms and validate them on real world hardware.
Following this initial stage Prodrive developed a prototype ECU known as the DP200 which included bespoke hardware for the fuel cell application but retained sufficient flexibility to support development changes.
Once the hardware design was fixed, Prodrive developed the PP150 which is a bespoke ECU suitable for volume production, with potential for a price around GBP 250 per unit.
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