Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Yokohama National University

Takahiko Hasegawa

Kota Manabe

Nobuyuki Kitamura

Toshihiko Minamii

Hiroyuki Imanishi

Kenji Tsubosaka

Takeshi Maenaka

Shunji Inoue

Kimihiko Teshima

Takanori Kito

Tomohiko Kaneko

Shigeaki Murata

Tomio Yamanaka

Takashi Harayama

Khalid Hassan Hussein

Nobuo Watanabe

Satoshi Watanabe

Ryosuke Oya

Shinji Hatae

Takahiro Umehara

Satoshi Shiokawa

Kohei Oda

Atsuo Kawamura

Norihiro Fukaya

Yasuhiro Osada

Shuhei Nakamura

Yukinori Tsuruta

Ayano Asai

Koji Terashima

Syun Yoshida

A hydrogen gas supply system comprises a storing unit that stores hydrogen, a communication unit that receives at least either of burden information indicative of an environmental burden exerted during manufacturing of hydrogen externally received by the storing unit and quality information indicative of quality with respect to the hydrogen externally received by the storing unit, a user interface unit that provides an output in accordance with the at least either of the burden information and the quality information with respect to the hydrogen supplied from the storing unit to the user, and a controller that controls the user interface unit based on an amount of the hydrogen received by the storing unit and the at least either of the burden information and the quality information, which is received by the communication unit.

Hydrogen gas supply system, point management system, and service management system

A fuel cell vehicle includes: a fuel cell; a storage portion to store produced water that is produced as a result of power generation by the fuel cell; a drainage valve for switching between a storage state and a drainage state of discharging the produced water from the storage portion to the outside of the fuel cell vehicle; a road information acquisition portion configured to acquire road information on roads on which the fuel cell vehicle travels; and a controller configured to drainage valve control operation. The controller sets a road region meeting a first condition defined in advance regarding road information and that permits the drainage state as a first road region where the drainage state is permitted, and the controller performs drainage if a drainage implementation condition defined in advance, including traveling of the fuel cell vehicle in the first road region, is fulfilled.

Fuel cell vehicle

There is provided a fuel cell vehicle comprising a motor configured to perform a regenerative operation and to drive the fuel cell vehicle; a fuel cell; a secondary battery; and a control unit. The control unit comprises a weight acquirer configured to obtain a current weight of the fuel cell vehicle; and a charge discharge controller configured to set a higher value to an upper limit value and to set a lower value to a lower limit value when the current weight calculated by the weight acquirer is an increased weight that is larger than a reference value, compared with the upper limit value and the lower limit value set when the current weight is the reference weight.

A fuel cell system includes a removal treatment execution unit configured to execute an oxide layer removal treatment that removes an oxide layer generated on a catalyst of a fuel cell. The removal treatment execution unit is configured to execute the oxide layer removal treatment by adjusting a voltage of the fuel cell to be within a predetermined second voltage range lower than a predetermined first voltage range that is lower than an open-circuit voltage, when an operation of the fuel cell system shifts from a first operation, where a current value of the fuel cell is zero and the flow rate is controlled to maintain the voltage of the fuel cell within the first voltage range, to a second operation, where the current value is larger than zero and the flow rate is controlled in response to an output request to the fuel cell.

Fuel cell system and oxide layer removal method

A plurality of high voltage unit controllers each includes: a monitoring unit that monitors the hard shutdown signal sent through the dedicated wire lines; and a shutdown unit that, based on a monitoring result of the monitoring unit, stops operation of the high voltage unit that is under control of this high voltage unit controller, and further stops at least part of control functions of this high voltage unit controller.

Fuel cell system

A controller of a fuel cell system is configured to perform a normal mode in which one of a plurality of injectors is driven in a case where a needed power for the fuel cell stack is lower than a predetermined value, and perform a high load mode in which two or more of the injectors are driven in a case where the needed power is equal to or higher than the predetermined value. The controller is configured to output a driving command to each of the injectors under a condition that the normal mode is to be performed, and detect closing failure in one injector driven under the driving command in a case where a pressure measured by a pressure measurer after a time point at which the driving command is output is lower than a predetermined threshold.

A method of determining hydrogen deficiency of a fuel cell having a plurality of cell groups includes a reference value storage step of storing, as a reference value, a value of impedance in a state where hydrogen-off gas is discharged from the fuel cell and hydrogen gas and oxidant gas are supplied, a measured value calculation step of calculating a measured value of impedance based on a voltage of the cell groups and a current of the fuel cell, a corrected value calculation step of calculating a corrected value of impedance by correcting the measured value based on the reference value, and a determination step of determining that hydrogen deficiency occurs in a case where the corrected value exceeds a predetermined threshold.

Method of determining hydrogen deficiency and device for determining hydrogen deficiency

If a main stop valve of a fuel gas tank is not opened, it becomes possible to display a remaining level of fuel gas. A remaining fuel level displaying method for the fuel cell system comprises: if the main stop valve is opened, then calculating a remaining level of fuel gas in the fuel gas tank using a pressure value acquired from the pressure sensor, and displaying the calculated remaining level of the fuel gas on a display device, and if the main stop valve is closed, then displaying on the display device a remaining level of the fuel gas that was stored into a memory at a time when the main stop valve was shut off.

Remaining fuel level displaying method for fuel cell system and fuel cell equipped vehicle

A fuel cell system capable of improving the voltage controllability of a converter provided in the system is provided. A controller judges whether or not a passing power of a DC/DC converter falls within a reduced response performance area for the number of active phases as of the present moment. When the controller determines that the passing power of the DC/DC converter falls within the reduced response performance area, the controller determines the number of phases which avoids the driving within the reduced response performance area, and outputs a command for switching to the determined number of phases (phase switching command) to the DC/DC converter.

Fuel cell system with regulation of DC/DC converter passing power

A driving frequency setting portion is provided. The driving frequency setting portion sets a switching frequency of a switching element on the basis of a notification from a driving phase number switching portion. A ripple current detected by a current sensor is in inverse proportion to inductance of reactor. Since a ripple current becomes the largest in the single-phase driving, in this embodiment, considering both the ripple current and switching loss, a switching frequency for the single-phase driving is set higher than a switching frequency for multiphase driving.

Converter controlling apparatus and multiphase converter

A voltage boost converter includes: a main voltage boost portion that has a first switch and a first coil, and that raises output voltage of a direct-current power source by using counter electromotive force of the coil caused by the switch performing a switching action on the coil; and a subsidiary voltage boost portion which has a capacitor that adjusts potential difference between two poles of the switch by amount of electricity stored, and which reduces switching loss of the switch by adjusting the amount of electricity in the capacitor during the switching action, and which has a second switch and a second coil. The second coil is formed by winding a wire around at least a portion of a core formed of a magnetic body. The core is provided with a gap formed of a non-magnetic body. A core region formed of a magnetic body is adjacent to the gap.

Fuel cell system including soft switching boost converter

Provided is a converter control device which detects an on-failure of an auxiliary switch constituting an auxiliary circuit of a soft switching converter and can prevent element failures. A current sensor for detecting the current flowing in a coil is provided between a fuel cell and the. A controller sequentially detects current by use of the current sensor and makes a judgment as to whether or not the detected current has exceeded an overcurrent threshold value stored in a memory (not shown). When the controller judges that the current has exceeded the overcurrent threshold value, the controller judges that a second switching element has an on-failure, and performs a fail-safe operation by stopping the driving of a converter (for example, a U-phase converter) of an auxiliary circuit provided with this second switching element.

Converter control device

A voltage conversion circuit apparatus that adjusts a timing skew between the switching control of the first switching element and the switching control of the second switching element includes: a skew storage portion that stores a timing skew between the switching controls of the first and second switching elements after the voltage conversion circuit apparatus is manufactured; and a timing adjustment portion that corrects the stored timing skew and thereby adjusts the timing relation between a first pulse signal and a second pulse signal so as to bring within a permissible range the timing skew that occurs when the switching controls of the first and second switching elements are performed by using the first pulse signal and the second pulse signal.

DC-DC converter with an auxiliary circuit for performing soft-switching

A fuel cell system includes a fuel cell, a multiphase voltage conversion device with N-phases (N being an integer equal to or larger than two) that is connected to the fuel cell, a control signal generation portion that generates control signals to control each phase of the multiphase voltage conversion device by superimposing a control waveform for measuring impedance on a voltage indicating an output target voltage of the multiphase voltage conversion device and sequentially outputs the control signals corresponding to N phases with a predetermined phase difference to the multiphase voltage conversion device, and an impedance calculation portion that measures a current and a voltage of the fuel cell on cycles corresponding to N predetermined sampling frequencies having a phase difference equal to the predetermined phase difference and calculates an impedance of the fuel cell based on the measured current and the measured voltage.

Growing community of inventors

Toyota, Japan

Takahiko Hasegawa