Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Masashi Toida

Yoshiaki Naganuma

Tsuyoshi Maruo

Tomohiro Ogawa

Masaaki Matsusue

Tomio Yamanaka

Masahiro Okuyoshi

Hiroyuki Imanishi

Hiroyuki Tsunekawa

Yusuke Nishida

Mitsuhiro Nada

Shigeki Hasegawa

Kazuo Yamamoto

Masahiro Ito

Tomotaka Ishikawa

Ryouichi Namba

Seiichi Tanaka

Mahiro Ozeki

Kenji Umayahara

Tomohiko Kaneko

Keigo Suematsu

Takashi Yamada

Shuya Kawahara

Yohei Okamoto

Hiroaki Mori

Akihiro Kamiya

Yuji Kakeno

Hideaki Mizuno

Shun Matsumoto

Toshiyuki Sanada

Ryota Akaboshi

A fuel cell system includes: a fuel cell; a temperature acquisition unit that acquires a temperature at a specific position in a vehicle equipped with the fuel cell system; a purge unit that purges the fuel cell when an operation of the fuel cell is stopped; and a control unit that acquires the temperature at the specific position from the temperature acquisition unit at least once from when the fuel cell system is stopped until the fuel cell system is started again, and uses the temperature at the specific position to determine whether purging at a stop by the purge unit is necessary when the fuel cell system is stopped next.

Fuel cell system and control method of the same

A fuel cell system includes a fuel cell, a hydrogen tank, a hydrogen supply passage connecting the hydrogen tank and the fuel cell, a cutoff valve configured to cut off circulation of hydrogen in the hydrogen supply passage, a detection unit configured to detect a start of filling of the hydrogen tank with hydrogen, and a purge controller configured to close the cutoff valve in a case where the fuel cell system is stopped and the detection unit detects the start of filling with hydrogen in a state in which purge processing of purging the in-cell hydrogen flow passage is to be executed, and to execute processing of purging the in-cell hydrogen flow passage by causing hydrogen remaining on a downstream side of the cutoff valve in a hydrogen flow in the hydrogen supply passage to flow in the in-cell hydrogen flow passage as the purge processing.

Fuel Cell System

A cooling water temperature of a fuel cellis detected by a sensor. Based on the outside air temperature, a first threshold temperature and a second threshold temperature lower than the first threshold temperature are calculated. When it is judged that the cooling water temperature is lower than the first threshold temperature and higher than the second threshold temperature, first warmup processing is performed. When it is judged that the cooling water temperature is lower than the second threshold temperature, second warmup processing with an amount of heat generation greater than the first warmup processing is performed.

Fuel cell system and method of controlling fuel cell system

A fuel cell system includes: a fuel cell that is supplied with a reaction gas to generate electricity; a plurality of auxiliary components used for power generation of the fuel cell; and a control device that causes the fuel cell to generate electricity when a predetermined scavenging start condition is satisfied and controls the auxiliary components using electric power generated by the fuel cell to perform a scavenging process of removing water in a flow path of the reaction gas using the reaction gas, during a stop period in which electric power is not supplied to a load from the fuel cell system.

Fuel cell system

A fuel cell system includes a fuel cell stack, a temperature measurement unit, and a controller. The controller is configured to, when the stack temperature is equal to or lower than a predetermined first threshold temperature at the time of startup of the fuel cell system, control a heat generation amount per unit time of the fuel cell stack to a set heat generation amount to perform a warming-up operation until the stack temperature increases to a target temperature, and when the stack temperature is equal to or higher than a predetermined second threshold temperature, execute at least one of setting the target temperature to be lower than the target temperature when the stack temperature is lower than the second threshold temperature and setting the set heat generation amount to be smaller than the set heat generation amount when the stack temperature is lower than the second threshold temperature.

A fuel cell system includes a fuel cell a temperature acquisition unit that acquires a temperature of the fuel cell, a cell unit voltage sensor that detects a voltage of each of fuel cell units, and a controller that controls the fuel cell system. The controller restricts an output current of the fuel cell when the voltage of the individual fuel cell unit becomes equal to or lower than a predetermined value in a warm-up operation, execute the warm-up operation when the temperature of the fuel cell is equal to or lower than a predetermined temperature, after the fuel cell system receives a start-up request, and stop an operation of the fuel cell system when a stop condition including that the voltage of the fuel cell unit is continuously equal to or lower than a predetermined voltage value for a predetermined time is satisfied after start of the warm-up operation.

A fuel cell system herein may include a battery configured to supply electric power to a fuel cell auxiliary device used for activating a fuel cell stack. When remaining electric energy in the battery is higher than an electric energy threshold upon activation of the fuel cell stack, a controller of the fuel cell system may start outputting current from the fuel cell stack after a fuel concentration in the fuel cell stack reaches a predetermined fuel concentration threshold, and when the remaining electric energy decreases below the electric energy threshold while the fuel concentration is being increased, the controller may start outputting current from the fuel cell stack regardless of the fuel concentration in the fuel cell stack. The current can be obtained from the fuel cell stack even when the remaining electric energy in the battery is low.

A fuel cell system comprises: a gas-liquid separator separating exhaust gas of a fuel cell stack into a liquid component and a gas component and storing liquid water of the liquid component; a circulation pipe; a drain pipe discharging the liquid water; and a drain valve opening and closing the drain pipe. In an end scavenging process that is executed when operation of the fuel cell system is finished, the control unit opens the drain valve when a valve opening condition for the drain valve is satisfied. The valve opening condition is set such that an amount of the liquid water stored in the gas-liquid separator at the time the drain valve is opened in the end scavenging process is larger than an amount of the liquid water stored in the gas-liquid separator at the time the drain valve is opened during normal operation of the fuel cell system.

Fuel cell system and method for controlling fuel cell system

Provided is a fuel cell system that can effectively suppress clogging of a pipe due to freezing of water in a fuel gas supply system thereof without the need for halting the operation of the fuel cells, and thus is highly reliable. When possible freezing of water is detected or presumed to be present downstream of an injector, the amount of a fuel gas to be supplied from a circulation pump that is disposed in a circulation channel is relatively increased compared to the amount of the fuel gas to be supplied from the injector.

A fuel cell system, comprising: a fuel cell stack including a stacked body provided by stacking a plurality of cells in a stacking direction; a compressor configured to feed a purge gas to a cathode of the fuel cell stack; a controller configured to control the compressor, such as to perform stop-time purging that purges the cathode of the fuel cell stack when operation of the fuel cell system is stopped; a first temperature gauge configured to measure a first temperature value that reflects temperature of a cell placed near a center in the stacking direction among the plurality of cells constituting the stacked body and to input the measured first temperature value into the controller; and a second temperature gauge configured to measure a second temperature value that reflects temperature of a cell placed near an end in the stacking direction among the plurality of cells constituting the stacked body and to input the measured second temperature value into the controller, wherein the controller is configured to suspend the stop-time purging when the first temperature value is equal to or higher than a first reference temperature and the second temperature value is lower than a second reference temperature.

Fuel cell system with cathode purging

A control unit of a fuel cell system includes a valve control unit configured such that, when it is determined that an exhaust valve is stuck open in a quick warming-up operation, the valve control unit sets at least one of an operable opening area which is an opening area capable of being changed by control and a rate of opening change which is an opening changeable frequency at which an opening is changeable per unit time, for at least one of a pressure adjusting valve and a flow division valve, such that a flow rate of a cathode gas supplied to a fuel cell is in an allowable range of a requested supply flow rate required for the quick warming-up operation.

A fuel cell system includes a fuel cell, an oxidizing gas supplier, an oxidizing gas supply pipe, an oxidizing gas discharge pipe, a fuel gas supply pipe, a fuel gas return pipe, a fuel gas discharge valve, and a controller. The controller executes valve closing control to close the fuel gas discharge valve; and determines the flow rate of a diluent gas to be supplied to an oxidizing gas supply portion by the oxidizing gas supplier according to the flow rate of a leakage gas flowing from the fuel gas discharge valve to the oxidizing gas discharge pipe after the execution of the valve closing control. The flow rate of the diluent gas to be supplied to the oxidizing gas supply portion is determined to increase as the flow rate of the leakage gas increases.

Fuel cell system and control method of fuel cell system

There is provided a fuel cell system, wherein a controller configured to set the flow volume of a fluid in an anode flow path at an outlet of an anode of the fuel cell to a first flow volume, then set thereafter the flow volume of the fluid in the anode flow path at the outlet of the anode to a second flow volume which is smaller than the first flow volume, and discharge the water in the hydrogen discharge flow path by opening an exhaust and drain valve while the fluid is flowing at the second flow volume.

Fuel cell system and method for discharging fluid in the system

The method comprises: determining whether or not an inlet temperature is equal to or above a lower-limit temperature of a temperature range in which generated water does not freeze within the fuel cell; and adjusting the flow rate of the cooling medium in the circulation flow path to become more than the normal flow rate when it is determined that the inlet temperature is equal to or above the lower-limit temperature, and adjusting the flow rate of the cooling medium in the circulation flow path to be equal to or below the normal flow rate when it is determined that the inlet temperature is not equal to or above the lower-limit temperature.

Flow control method of cooling medium in a fuel cell system, and fuel cell system

There is provided a fuel cell system comprising a first fuel stack, a first temperature gauge configured to measure a first temperature value, a power generation voltage meter configured to measure a power generation voltage, a cell voltage meter and a controller configured to control a temperature regulating mechanism such as to perform a temperature rise of the fuel cell stack. The controller is further configured to start the temperature rise of the fuel cell stack when a cell voltage is lower than a predetermined voltage value. When at least one of a plurality of time measurement conditions is satisfied after the first temperature value has reached a first reference temperature after a start of the temperature rise, the controller measures a time duration during which a voltage difference by subtracting the cell voltage from an average voltage of cells is maintained to be not greater than a predetermined voltage difference. When the measured time duration has reached a first reference time, the controller terminates the temperature rise. The plurality of time measurement conditions are conditions that predetermined time periods have elapsed since termination of a warm-up operation, since termination of an intermittent operation, since termination of regenerative braking and since a shift of the state of the fuel cell stack to a power generation capable state.

Growing community of inventors

Nagoya, Japan

Masashi Toida