FCTRAC and BioH2Modul – A Way to Zero Emission Mobility in Agriculture

Abstract

On the way to Zero Emission Mobility, no feasible solution for trac-tors is so far available, as battery electric vehicles are not able to fulfill the re-quirements for range, refueling time, and weight. Therefore, in the frame of the funded project “FCTRAC”, a fuel cell tractor is developed from an existing diesel vehicle to meet these specific requirements of the powertrain. Due to the limited space in the vehicle and the challenges arising from the thermal management of the fuel cell powertrain, innovative solutions have been developed to achieve the full-operability of the vehicle. Moreover, no hydrogen fueling infrastructure exists in the operational areas of most of tractor use-cases. Hence, another goal of the project is the development of an input-flexible plant for decentralized production of green hydrogen. Product gas from gasification of wood chips, biogas out of biogas plants, as well as di-gester gas out of sewage treatment plants are considered as input gases. The pro-posed solution, the so-called “BioH2Modul”, can be coupled with these sources and deliver hydrogen to the storage system. As combined heat and power plants using wood gasification, sewage treatment plants and biogas plants are wide-spread in the agricultural sector, hydrogen can be produced in the operational areas of the tractors. The first part of the paper will present the wide range of process units, which can be implemented in the process chain design for decentralized production of high-purity hydrogen from the different feed gases. These process units are con-sequently classified according to their operating conditions, thus forming the ba-sis for the design of the process chains. In the second part, the fuel cell powertrain will be described as well as the ther-mal system and simulation results. Through an innovative packaging in the vehi-cle, the higher cooling requirements of the fuel cell system are fulfilled even in critical conditions.