Resumen
In light of the rise in human-produced greenhouse gases emissions and average global temperature, urgent measures are mandatory to limit the human-produced global warming. Numerous roadmaps aim to limit the increase in average global temperature to 2°C with respect to pre-industrialization levels. For that purpose, the decarbonization of the transportation sector is considered key and is expected to be achieved by the progressive integration of electric technologies in the propulsion systems of the vehicles. Nonetheless, certain applications such as heavy-duty transport require high energy density energy carriers, hence batteries are not enough for long-haul goods distribution. Complying with the needs of these applications, at global, European, National, and regional scale the H2-FC technology binomial is deemed the most promising solution to mitigate the emissions of the freight transport sector.
In this line, the main objective of DEFIANCE project is to define optimal FCV architectures for heavy-duty application to maximize durability and minimize H2 consumption while understanding the potential and requirements in terms of costs, life cycle emissions and H2 production infrastructure when replacing the actual ICE-powered heavy-duty fleet by FCVs to accelerate the hydrogen economy deployment. To achieve this objective, advanced experimental facilities and modelling techniques will be combined through a methodology that will enable the optimization of FC technology at cell, stack, system and vehicle levels. The resulting heavy-duty virtual FCV will be used to evaluate the FC technology integration in the freight transport sector focusing not only on performance but also on cross-cutting issues such as stack durability, vehicle well-to-wheel emissions and total cost of ownership to minimize environmental impact and resources depletion while maximizing energy efficiency and market penetration.
The expected outcomes derived from this project are not only limited to the understanding in detail of the potential of FC technologies for freight transport application in terms of performance, emissions, costs and durability. A set of tools and methodologies to optimize the FCV architecture for heavy-duty applications will be developed in such a way that they can be transferred to the industry to facilitate the implementation of FC systems in the powertrain of heavy-duty vehicles. Finally, the results will permit the analysis of the requirements in terms of H2 supply and the benefits in terms of well-to-wheel emissions for progressive freight transport fleet replacement according to the EU targets to accelerate the Hydrogen Economy deployment in the transportation sector.
