Cathode Pressure Modeling of the Buckeye Bullet II 540 kW Hydrogen Fuel Cell System

This paper applies a well published control level model for fuel cell system dynamics to the unique fuel cell system of the world’s fastest fuel cell vehicle, the Buckeye Bullet 2. The goal is to develop a system model to predict the pressure dynamics of the cathode system so the cathode can be operated at maximum allowable pressure to provide maximum performance. The details of how the model must be modified to fit the unique fuel cell system are provided. The results of the initial implementation show several shortcomings when the published model is implemented. The largest problems are found to be with how the model treats the liquid product water that is generated. For this reason, modifications are implemented to attempt to improve the correlation between the model and collected data. The results show partial improvements in 3 areas of performance, indicating that more accurate dynamic models are needed to fully characterize the phenomena. Further model development and testing are planned based on the initial results.