Fuel cell/lithium-ion battery hybrid for manportable applications

In this work we have demonstrated a hybrid system of a fuel cell and rechargeable battery with pulse power capability. It successfully ran a pulse power load simulation synonymous with military electronics and communications equipment. The hybrid consisted of a 35 W proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) stack in parallel with a Li-ion battery. Two cyclic regimes were utilized. Each consisted of a baseline load for 9 min followed by a higher pulse load for 1 min. One regime consisted of 20 W (baseline)/40 W (pulse) load; whereas, the second was 25 W/50 W. Under both scenarios, the hybrid provided significantly enhanced performance over the individual components tested separately.