Energetic Assessment on a Dual-Temperature Evaporation Pre-Cooling System for the Hydrogen Refueling Station

Abstract

The rapid, safe, and adequate refueling for hydrogen-based fuel cell vehicles relies on the deep pre-cooling on the station side, which brings significant energy consumption. Step cooling is an ideal solution for the occasion with a large temperature drop. In this paper, a novel pre-cooling system is proposed by incorporating the two-temperature evaporation to realize step cooling in the hydrogen refueling station. The pre-cooling load, system performance, and energy-saving potential are investigated under variable storage configurations and working conditions. The results show that the integral pre-cooling load increases linearly with the ambient temperature. However, the load share and the system performance are affected by the hydrogen intermediate temperature, the optimal value of which exhibits a nearly linear relationship with the ambient temperature. The novel system can save up to 30.2 % electricity relative to the conventional system with a single evaporator.

Keywords: Hydrogen pre-cooling, Refrigeration system, Step cooling, Multi-evaporation.