Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Miho Hatazaki

Kazuo Yamamoto

Shigeki Hasegawa

Ikuyasu Kato

Chiaki Mizutani

A fuel cell system includes a fuel cell, a supply flow passage and a discharge flow passage for anode gas, a gas-liquid separator, a discharge valve, a differential pressure detection unit configured to detect a differential pressure between an upstream side and a downstream side of the discharge valve, and a control unit. The control unit is configured to estimate an effective cross-sectional area of the discharge valve for the anode off-gas, which is decreased by an amount of water flowing into the gas-liquid separator and flowing out from the discharge valve, based on the differential pressure, and to estimate a discharge amount of the anode off-gas based on the estimated effective cross-sectional area.

Fuel cell system and anode off-gas discharge amount estimation system

A control unit of a fuel cell (i) performs, when an estimated value of a storage amount in a storage portion of a gas-liquid separator is larger than a threshold storage amount, a first calculation process of calculating an estimated value of a discharge amount after a drain valve is opened, based on a drain speed which is determined with respect to a differential pressure in a first relationship; and (ii) performs, when the estimated value of the storage amount is equal to or smaller than the threshold storage amount, a second calculation process of calculating the estimated value of the discharge amount, based on a current drain speed determined with respect to an estimated value of a current storage amount in a second relationship that is prepared in advance and in which the drain speed decreases as the estimated value of the storage amount decreases.

Fuel cell system

A fuel cell monitoring device includes: an impedance measuring part measuring an impedance at each fuel cell and an impedance at a fuel cell stack as a whole; a water content estimating part calculating a water content estimated value at each fuel cell using a gas diffusion resistance obtained from a measurement result about the impedance at each fuel cell, and calculating a water content reference estimated value indicating a water content in each fuel cell using a gas diffusion resistance obtained from a measurement result about the impedance at the fuel cell stack as a whole; and a determining part detecting at least either the occurrence of deterioration of catalyst in the fuel cell or the occurrence of a distribution failure of reactive gas at the fuel cell by determining based on the magnitude of the water content estimated value relative to the water content reference estimated value.

Growing community of inventors

Nisshin, Japan

Miho Hatazaki