Consideration on fundamental characteristic of hydrogen generator system fueled by NaBH4 for fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle

Sodium borohydride (NaBH
₄
) is attractive as fuel for fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle because of its high energy density. A hydrogen reactor which generates hydrogen gas by hydrolysis of NaBH
₄
has been proposed. This paper shows advantages and disadvantages of NaBH
₄
as fuel for FCHEV. Moreover, a hydrogen supply system fueled by NaBH
₄
for fuel cell is proposed, and the experimental result using the proposed system is shown. In addition, it is verified that 100W fuel cell was able to generate electric power by hydrogen gas generated from the proposed system. In the final section, in order to confirm the electric generating capacity using the proposed system, the characteristics of 5kW fuel cell is reported.