ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses fuel cell vehicle components. It presents hybrid fuel cell system design and control for electric vehicles. The chapter describes the fault diagnosis of hybrid fuel cell system. Fossil fuels including coal, oil, and gas, which we heavily depend on, can cause air pollution and greenhouse gas problems. A fuel cell system can operate with other conventional and alternative fuels, such as hydrogen, ethanol and natural gas. Oxygen and hydrogen are fed to the fuel cell system at an appropriate rate according to the current drawn from the load. To achieve high efficiency of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell, water management is crucial to the fuel cell system. Hydrogen can also be produced from hydrocarbon fuel such as natural gas, gasoline, or methanol through chemical processes: steam reformation, partial oxidation, and autothermal reformation. Using fuel processor in vehicle applications causes another problem of slow dynamics due to the slow heat transfer processes, mass transfer and mixing delays.
