Research Project

INN-BALANCE: Innovative cost improvements for balance of plant components of automotive PEMFC systems

Type

European Project

Start Date

01/01/2017

End Date

31/10/2021

Project Code

H2020-JTI-FCH-2016-1-735969

Project illustration

Staff

Project Description

The aim of INN-BALANCE is to develop a novel and integrated development platform for developing advanced Balance of Plant components in current fuel cell based vehicles, in order to improve their efficiency and reliability, reducing costs and presenting a stable supply chain to the European car manufacturers and system integrators. Accordingly, INN-BALANCE technical objectives are (i) to develop highly efficient and reliable fuel cell BoP components; (ii) to reduce costs of current market products in fuel cell systems; (iii) to achieve high technology readiness levels (TRL7 or higher) in all the tackled developments; and (iv) to improve and tailor development tools for design, modelling and testing innovative components in fuel cell based vehicles. To this end, a European Consortium composed by major automotive companies, consulting groups, research institutes and universities was established. INN-BALANCE will be focused on four main general topics; first of all on new components developments, addressing the latest changes and trends in fuel cells vehicles technology, from new air turbo-compressor, anode recirculation/injection module and advanced control/diagnosis devices to new concepts of thermal management and anti-freeze units based on standard automotive components; secondly, on the vehicle integration and validation of the components in a TRL7 platform placed at a well-known car manufacturing platform; thirdly, providing innovative and cost optimized manufacturing processes especially developed for automotive BoP components; finally, on the results dissemination and exploitation, new technology broadcasting and public awareness of new, low-cost and reliable clean energy solutions in Europe bringing at the same time highly qualified new job opportunities.

Consortium:
Fundación Ayesa, Spain (coordinator)
Brose Fahrzeugteile GmbH & Co., Germany
AVL LIST GMBH, Austria
Volvo Personvagnar AB, Sweden
PowerCell Sweden AB, Sweden
Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial -UPC-, Spain
Deutsche Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt EV -DLR-, Germany
Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum in the Steinbeis Innovation gGmbH, Germany
Celeroton AG, Switzerland

Project Publications

Journal Publications

  • J.A. Aguilar, J. Andrade-Cetto and A.P. Husar. Control oriented estimation of the exchange current density in PEM fuel cells via stochastic filtering. International Journal of Energy Research, 46(15): 22516-22529, 2022.

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  • J.C. Gómez, M. Serra and A.P. Husar. Controller design for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell systems for automotive applications. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 46(45): 23263-23278, 2021.

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  • M.G. Carignano, V. Roda, R. Costa, L. Valiño, A. Lozano and F. Barreras. Assessment of energy management in a fuel cell/battery hybrid vehicle. IEEE Access, 7(1): 16110-16122, 2019.

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  • J.A. Luna, E. Usai, A.P. Husar and M. Serra. Enhancing the efficiency and lifetime of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell using nonlinear model predictive control with nonlinear observation. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 64(8): 6649-6659, 2017.

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Conference Publications

  • A. Molavi, A.P. Husar, M. Serra, H. Hjortberg, N. Nilsson, M. Kogler, J. Sanchez Monreal and Y.O. Eldigair. State Machine-based architecture to control PEMFC system processes in a fuel cell electric vehicle, 2022 European Hydrogen Energy Conference, 2022, Madrid, Spain, pp. 2.

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  • J.A. Aguilar and A.P. Husar. Modelling liquid water effect on proton-exchange membrane fuel cells, 2019 European Fuel Cell Conference & Exhibition, 2019, Naples, Italy, pp. 333-334.

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  • J.A. Aguilar and A.P. Husar. Load profile effect on durability of proton exchange membrane fuel cells, 7th Iberian Symposium on Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Advanced Batteries, 2019, Barcelona, Spain.

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  • J.C. Gómez, J.K. Dombrovski, M. Serra and A.P. Husar. PEM automotive stack model with experimental validation, 7th Iberian Symposium on Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Advanced Batteries, 2019, Barcelona, Spain, pp. 238-241.

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  • J.A. Luna and R. Costa. Chattering free high order sliding mode observer for estimation of liquid water fraction in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell, 17th European Control Conference, 2018, Cyprus, pp. 1226-1231.

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  • R. Costa and S. Strahl. Temperature control of open-cathode PEM fuel cells, 20th IFAC World Congress, 2017, Toulouse, France, Vol 50 of IFAC Papers Online, pp. 11088-11093, Elsevier.

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  • R. Costa and J.A. Luna. Observación de la fracción de agua líquida en pilas de combustible tipo PEM de cátodo abierto, XXXVIII Jornadas de Automática, 2017, Gijón, Spain, pp. 108-114, CEA.

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Other Publications

  • P. Haering, J.M. Garcia Campos, C. Mora González, M. Kogler, A. Molavi, J. Sanchez Monreal, E. Nordqvist, G. Oberholzer, D. Ramette, G. Montaner Rios and A. Schenk. INN-BALANCE Guidebook. Improvement of Balance of Plant Components for PEM Based Automotive Fuel Cell Systems. Steinbeis-Edition, 2021.

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