Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Yusuke Miyamoto

Shigeki Hasegawa

Naoki Tomi

Tomotaka Ishikawa

Atsuo Iio

Masafumi Yamagata

Nobukazu Mizuno

A fuel gas supply system for a fuel cell includes an injector, an inlet pressure acquisition unit, a discharge valve, a hydrogen partial pressure acquisition unit, and a controller. The controller is configured to stop driving the injector when a hydrogen partial pressure reaches or exceeds a first upper limit value in a state where the injector is being driven, and start driving the injector when the hydrogen partial pressure falls to or below a first lower limit value in a state where the injector is stopped. The controller is configured to open the discharge valve when an inlet pressure reaches or exceeds a second upper limit value in a state where the discharge valve is closed, and close the discharge valve when the inlet pressure falls to or below a second lower limit value in a state where the discharge valve is open.

Fuel gas supply system for fuel cell and method of controlling fuel gas supply system

A fuel cell system is equipped with a control unit that controls a rotational speed of the turbo compressor that supplies air to an air supply flow passage and an opening degree of at least one valve that adjusts a flow rate and a pressure of the air supplied to a fuel cell such that an operating point of the turbo compressor becomes a target operating point. The control unit sets the target operating point within an operating point range that is on the higher flow rate side than at least part of a first region where an amount of change in flow rate is larger than a predetermined value when a pressure ratio of the turbo compressor is changed by a predetermined amount at a same rotational speed, on a higher flow rate side than a surging region, when a predetermined condition is fulfilled.

Fuel cell system and method of controlling fuel cell system

The present disclosure provides a fuel cell system that achieves a stable operation of a turbo compressor. The fuel cell system includes: a fuel cell; an air supply flow path; a turbo compressor; a bypass flow path configured to discharges air by branching off from the air supply flow path; a pressure regulating valve; a bypass valve; and a control unit, the pressure regulating valve, and the bypass valve, in which the control unit calculates, from a flow rate of air supplied based on an actual rotation speed of the turbo compressor and a target flow rate of air to the fuel cell, a flow rate of excess air discharged from the bypass flow path, and determines a degree of opening of the bypass valve based on the target flow rate of air and the flow rate of excess air.

Fuel cell system

A control unit of a fuel cell system acquires a service operating point, repeats a process of calculating a distance between the service operating point and a surging region, while transferring an operating point of a turbo compressor from a first operating point to a second operating point outside the surging region, sets opening degrees of a pressure adjusting valve and a bypass valve such that the turbo compressor operates at a required operating point, when the distance exceeds a threshold, and corrects at least one of the opening degrees of the pressure adjusting valve and the bypass valve such that the at least one of the opening degrees becomes larger than an opening degree set such that the turbo compressor operates at the required operating point, when the distance is equal to or shorter than the threshold.

There is provided a fuel cell system comprising a fuel cell including an electrolyte membrane, an anode and a cathode; and a controller configured to control a fuel gas supply part and an oxidizing gas supply part to supply amounts of a fuel gas and an oxidizing gas corresponding to a required power, to the fuel cell. During an intermittent operation that has the required power equal to or lower than a predetermined value and stops power generation in the fuel cell, the controller estimates a crossover amount that is an amount of the fuel gas moved from the anode to the cathode through the electrolyte membrane. The controller also calculates a supply amount of the oxidizing gas that is an amount of the oxidizing gas to be supplied to the fuel cell, based on the estimated crossover amount and controls the oxidizing gas supply part to supply the calculated supply amount of the oxidizing gas to the fuel cell. The supply amount of the oxidizing gas is calculated by an expression of: supply amount of oxidizing gas=crossover amount/2/oxygen concentration in oxidizing gas.

Growing community of inventors

Nisshin, Japan

Yusuke Miyamoto