Science Talks 3 (2022) 100039

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journal homepage: www.elsevier.es/sctalk

Fuel cell and battery technologies for a 800 kW ferry: two optimized
scenarios
Martin Gay a, Hossein Pourrahmani b, , Jan Van herle b
⁎
a
Vehicle Concepts, Stadler Rheintal AG, St. Margrethen 9430, Switzerland
b
Group of Energy Materials, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Sion 1951, Switzerland

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Considering the recent official targets by the authorities to 100% phase out sales or registrations of new internal com-
Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) bustion engines (ICE) that use gasoline, battery and fuel cell technologies have been suggested. In two different scenar-
Lithium-Ion battery ios, this study evaluates the possibility of integrating proton exchange membrane fuel cells to two different types of Li-
Ferry Ion batteries to provide 800kW power for a ferry with a total length of 50.8m to transport 780 passengers for a distance
Power generation
of 24km in 70mins. The optimized results indicate that the total size, and hydrogen consumption of around 8.34m3,
Optimization
and 36.1 kg/h, respectively, are needed in the first scenario to reach the maximum power of 800kW with 49.5% over-
all efficiency. The operating power of the integrated battery and fuel cell system is between 80kW to 720 kW, which is
10% to 90% of the maximum power. In the second scenario, the corresponding values of the size, and hydrogen con-
sumption are 8.23 m3, and 36 kg/h to reach the same power by the overall efficiency of 49.6%. The first scenario uses 8
modules of PEMFCs and one module of NMC while the second scenario uses LTO as the battery with the same numbers
of PEMFCs.

Video to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/

j.sctalk.2022.100039.

⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: Hossein.pourrahmani@epfl.ch (H. Pourrahmani).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sctalk.2022.100039
Received 23 May 2022; Accepted 24 May 2022
2772-5693/© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
M. Gay et al. Science Talks 3 (2022) 100039

Figures and tables

Fig. 1. The installed power generation capacity in the world.

Fig. 2. The possible drivers to change the final energy demand in the shipping sector: (a) The increasing parameters, (b) the decreasing parameters.

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M. Gay et al. Science Talks 3 (2022) 100039

Fig. 3. The readiness level of the shipping fuels.

Fig. 4. Total cost breakdown for a 22kWh Lithium-Ion battery for a 100% electric vehicle.

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Fig. 5. The advantages and disadvantages of the battery electric vehicles (BEVs).

Fig. 6. The required power demand for the round-trip of Lausanne-Evian.

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Fig. 7. The schematic of the integrated battery and fuel cell system by indicating the connections between the energy sources and the consumers. The variables that are
planned to be optimized are on the left-hand side while the user-defined components are on the right-hand side.

Fig. 8. Quasi-static model of the power split optimization.

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Fig. 9. Transient performance characteristics of the integrated fuel cell and battery system in the first scenario: (a) Power output by the fuel cells, (b) Hydrogen consumption
of the fuel cells, (c) Output energy and the state of charge (SOC) of the batteries.

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M. Gay et al. Science Talks 3 (2022) 100039

Fig. 10. Transient performance characteristics of the integrated fuel cell and battery system in the second scenario: (a) Power output by the fuel cells, (b) Hydrogen
consumption of the fuel cells, (c) Output energy and the state of the charge (SOC) of the batteries.

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Funding
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon
2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-
Curie grant agreement No. 754354.
Credit authorship contribution statement
Martin Gay: Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Visualization.
Hossein Pourrahmani: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Vali-
dation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Jan Van
Herle: Supervision, Project administration.
Declaration of interests
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial inter-
ests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the
work reported in this paper.
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Martin Gay is a development engineer in the Swiss transport in-
dustry. He graduated at the EPFL as a mechanical engineer with
a minor in energy. He carried out the energy management sys-
tem for fuel cells and batteries to design charging stations at
the Group of Energy Materials with the supervision of Dr. Van
herle. With a great knowledge about the design of integrated
system of the battery and fuel cell, he is now hired by the Stadler
company.
M. Gay et al.
Hossein Pourrahmani - After being selected as the student of
the year at the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST)
for three consecutive years, he received his master degree in
2019 with a focus on proton exchange membrane fuel cells.
He was awarded a full scholarship to continue his researches
at EPFL to obtain his Ph.D. in this field under the supervision
of Dr. Jan Van herle. He also won the Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Grant as a part of EPFL-innovator program, which was launched
to support the young talents to establish their own start-ups.
Science Talks 3 (2022) 100039
Jan Van Herle - As an eminent full professor in the field of fuel
cells at EPFL, he received his Ph.D. on 1993. In 2000, he co-
founded HTceramix SA (EPFL spin-off) and started working as
the 1st assistant and lecturer at EPFL. Ever since, he has been in-
volved in 72 funded project proposals to implement the aca-
demic concepts/ideas into the industry. He has been the head
of Group of Energy Material (GEM) since 2013 as a leading lab-
oratory at EPFL to develop state-of-the-art fuel cells and
electrolyzers.