1. Introduction
Green Hydrogen is a promising energy vector in the sector of automotive vehicles especially in the context of reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases. In the domain of domestic energy storage and especially if the seasonal context of photovoltaic power is considered, Hydrogen conversion and use can play an important role. Due to its low weight density, Hydrogen must be stored locally or on-board in high pressure reservoirs. A simplified representation of a storage station is given in
Figure 1.
In such a system, the green fuel is generated from electric renewable sources feeding a water electrolyser. Then the gaseous fuel is stored in a reservoir and is further used in the fuel-cell based generator. In
Figure 1, an oxygen storage element is also represented with a dotted line, evoking such a possibility. However, for most fuel-cell systems, the oxidation of Hydrogen in the cell stack is realized with oxygen taken from the ambient air. In
Figure 2, a more detailed scheme of the Hydrogen generation and storage is represented. The supply of the electrolyser is provided by a local grid where the renewable energy sources are connected. This grid is supplying also the air compressor which provides the auxiliary fluid to activate the gas booster.
In this system, the green fuel is pressurized to a high-pressure level around 700 bar (700 × 10
5 Pa) for personal vehicles or 350 bar for heavy means of transportation. For domestic Hydrogen storage there are today no standard pressure levels, but for economic reasons, the domestic pressure standard could be similar to the levels as in transportation. Mass development in this sector in the future would offer strong reduction of the prices of storage reservoirs and other components [
1]. For equipment in the domain of several kilowatts or tens of kilowatts of power, the pressurization machinery is realized conventionally by air driven gas boosters which are known for their simplicity, reliability and low costs [
2].
In addition to the technique of storage of Hydrogen by compression, storage in liquid form is also possible. However, because of the very low liquefaction temperature of hydrogen (around 20 K under atmospheric pressure), the liquid storage of hydrogen is not economical. Another possibility is storage in the form of a solid material by adsorption, as a metal hydrid [
3,
4]. Further techniques such as the transformation into formic acid through catalytic hydrogenation are possible [
5]. However, the alternative techniques to compression are characterized by lower energy densities of the stored Hydrogen and demand complex infrastructures.
For the compression device represented in
Figure 2, the poor energetic efficiency of a pneumatic motor in the gas booster addresses the question of the total efficiency of a complete storage station. In general, the main cause of the poor efficiency of pneumatic actuators resides in the fact that the air under pressure accumulated in the working chambers is simply released to the surroundings before initiating the return strokes.
Figure 3 shows a pressure-to-volume diagram of the thermodynamic change of state of the air in a pneumatic cylinder, where constant pressure displacement work is represented with the finely hatched square surface W
2 between V
1 and V
2. This surface corresponds to the effectively produced mechanical work by a cylinder under constant pressure P
2. To the left of the V
2 value of the volume, the surface under the decreasing curve (W
2d) corresponds to the recoverable expansion work corresponding to the lost energy when the exhaust valve is opened.
A better use of the pressurized air of a cylinder has been proposed, using the principle of adding an expansion work component to the constant pressure displacement work, thus recovering the internal energetic content of the in-taken air [
6,
7,
8,
9]. In principle, the addition of an expansion chamber can increase the cylinder system efficiency from around 0.35 to 0.7 [
8]. With the same goal to improve the efficiency, the principle of using the expansion energy has been applied to a pneumatic booster [
10]. Another better adapted system is based on the use of an additional expansion cylinder mechanically coupled to the filling cylinder [
11]. The resultant active force is in this case better adapted to the compression characteristics but needs a specific design to be able to provide a sufficient effort over the full length of the strokes, especially at the end of a compression stage when the increased pressure needs a high compression effort.
In this paper, an electrically driven gas booster is proposed, where the mechanical force is provided by a classical electric motor. The coupling of the rotational motion of the motor to the linear displacement of the compression stages can be realized on the basis of two different mechanisms. A classical crankshaft and two connecting rods can be used, or a special mechanism called the Scotch Yoke. These two possibilities will be described in the following sections. The original compression cylinders of the booster are conserved and placed on both sides of the new mechanisms. The strongly fluctuating compression forces of the pistons at a low frequency result in a strongly modulated power of the electric motor. For smoothing the power taken from the electrical feeding grid, an active power compensation system using a variable voltage capacitor is connected to the DC link of the frequency converter of the electric drive.
The proposed electrically driven gas booster is studied in the context of Hydrogen compression in storage facilities or in refueling stations, but such a system can be used for any other gases when its design and operation conditions are adapted.
2. An Electric Motor Instead of the Common Pneumatic Actuator
Figure 4 shows at the top the classical air-driven gas booster with the complete feeding chain which comprises an electric motor driving an air compressor. With conventional air compressors, the electric motor is connected directly to the grid, the standard frequency of which imposes the rotational speed and does not allow a variable air flowrate. As a consequence, the motor is switched on and off with the disadvantages of the relatively high inrush current of 5–6 times the rated motor current and of the undesired reactions of the feeding network. At the output of the compressor, the compressed air is stored in a low pressure reservoir. The pressurized air reservoir serves not only as a simple power source for the air-drive of the gas compression stages, but plays additionally the role of power buffer for the strongly fluctuating power demand of the compression cylinders. The control of the pneumatic actuator is realized through the pneumatic valves which are not represented in the figure. The cascade of the partial efficiencies of the electric motor (87%), the air compressor (65%) and a classical pneumatic motor (35%) leads to a compression efficiency of around 20%.
In the middle part of the figure, one of the new proposed systems is represented where the motion of the compression cylinders is provided by a crankshaft and two connecting rods driven by a variable speed rotating field machine. The low operating frequency of the compression stages is imposed by the temperature limit of the compression stages where the gas is heated up in dependence on the elevation of its pressure. For the adaptation of the motor speed to the low frequency of the piston’s oscillations, a mechanical reduction gear is inserted between the motor and the crankshaft. This new system greatly simplifies the supply chain of the compression stages by reducing the number of successive energy conversions and by eliminating the air compressor and the pneumatic actuator. The result is a highly improved energy efficiency. The partial efficiencies of the new system are estimated as 95% for the frequency converter, 92% for the motor and 97% for the gear, leading to a value of 84% for the driving equipment. Concerning the elevation of the gas temperature in the compression chambers, the classical pneumatic gas booster has an inherent cooling principle where the exhaust air of the pneumatic drive is evacuated through a sort of air jacket which leads around the compression cylinders and evacuates the compression heat. In the new electrically driven booster, this cooling equipment must be replaced by a separated electric blower which needs some additional consumption of electricity. However, the continuous operation of an extra blower has the advantage of being operated continuously in contrast to the intermittent air exhaust of the pneumatic drive and would have a better cooling effect. It must be further remarked that a good cooling of the compression cylinders has the added benefit of reducing the compression effort needed as the compression curve moves away from adiabatic compression towards isothermal compression.
Regarding the operating temperature of the new drive, there are no specific limitations as can be the case for the original pneumatic motor.
The lower part of the figure represents a second solution for the transformation of the rotational motion into a linear one and uses a non-conventional mechanical principle called the Scotch Yoke [
12]. In comparison to the system using a crankshaft, this system can be more easily integrated into the original gas booster and occupies a reduced space. From the aspect of energy efficiency, this third system has identical performance to the second solution. As will be shown in the next sections, both mechanisms will present similar variations of the needed torque.
4. The Electric Drive with an Active Power Smoothing Circuit
The waveforms of power and torque needed for the activation of the compression cylinders are represented in
Figure 15 and
Figure 16. These waveforms can be followed by a modern electric drive, for example a permanent magnet synchronous motor fed by a fast-switching voltage source inverter. The power, however, should not be taken directly from the feeding grid where the power level is normally smooth. To obtain at the line side of the frequency converter a fully smoothed power, a power compensating storage device is added and interconnected at the level of the intermediary DC circuit of the converter.
The active compensation device is composed of a capacitor which is periodically charged and discharged through a dedicated DC-DC conversion stage. The complete circuit of the drive fed by the voltage source converter and the active compensation circuit is represented in
Figure 18. A more detailed scheme of the power electronic circuit is given in
Figure 19.
The power converter feeding the motor is composed of two back-to-back connected voltage source converters. The converter at the motor-side has a torque and speed controller, and at the line side a line current control with a superimposed DC-link voltage control (
Figure 18).
According to the very specific waveform of the needed power and torque for the compression stages (
Figure 15 and
Figure 16), the current in the phases of the driving motor shows very strong variations. These variations and especially their corresponding low frequency can be seen in
Figure 20. The represented waveform of the current corresponds in this figure to a drive with a higher gear ratio, as was represented in
Figure 17.
4.1. The Active Power Compensator
The active power compensator is composed of a bidirectional step-down and step-up chopper circuit interfaced with the variable voltage storage capacitor through a smoothing inductor and is connected directly to the DC link of the frequency converter (
Figure 19).
The control of the active power compensator can be seen globally in
Figure 18. This control is based on the principle of using a feed-forward power control signal obtained from the output of the speed controller at the motor side. Then, the control of the capacitor current is realized, taking in account the actual value of the capacitor voltage. The capacitor’s current reference is obtained by dividing the compensation power reference by the capacitor voltage. The detailed control circuit of the compensation capacitor is given in
Figure 21.
4.2. Design of the Storage Capacitor
The design of the storage capacitor is based on the amount of energy to be stored and un-stored in it [
15,
16].
Figure 22 illustrates the time-integral of the exchanged power, corresponding to the total energy flow.
During one cycle of the power which corresponds to one half of the revolution of the crankshaft, the energy variation is of 298 J. During this variation, the storage capacitor is charged and discharged to obtain a smooth average value at the level of the power exchange with the grid. The amounts of charged energy and of the discharged one are identic, and are equal to the half of the energy variation mentioned before.
The domain of use of the capacitor in terms of its discharge ratio [
15,
17] can be calculated. The design criterion of this element corresponds to the definition of its corresponding voltage variation. The capacitor is discharged from its 100% value down to a value of 50%, starting from a physical value of 600 V.
The total energy content of the fully charged capacitor is [
17]:
For a voltage variation from 100% to 50% the energy extracted is
Then, the value of the capacitor is defined from
or 1100 mF
The waveform of the capacitor current of the active power compensation circuit is given in
Figure 23. The corresponding value of the capacitor voltage is represented in
Figure 24.
5. Conclusions
A new drive system for a Hydrogen compressor has been studied with the goal to increase the energy efficiency of a conventional gas booster. These boosters are used in low power storage facilities or in refueling stations for Hydrogen powered cars. Such gas boosters are currently driven by pneumatic motors which are well known for their very poor energy efficiency. The new drive system is realized using an electric motor powered by a power electronic frequency converter allowing a variable rotational speed.
The transmission of the rotational motion of the motor to the linear motion of the compression pistons can be realized with two different coupling mechanisms. The first presented system uses a conventional crankshaft and two piston rods. The second studied system is based on the use of a so-called Scotch-Yoke, which simplifies the realization and limits the external space and dimensions of the complete compressor.
The waveforms of the two systems as their forces, torques and power are simulated for a compressor which realizes a pressure shift from 15 bar to 160 bar.
A strongly fluctuating power in the driving motor appears due to the strong variation of the pressure in the compression cylinders. For the compensation of these fluctuations a dedicated smoothing equipment is proposed using an active power compensator interfaced to the DC link of the frequency converter; this avoids the power fluctuations being reflected in the connected grid. This auxiliary smoothing device is based on energy storage in a capacitor in which voltage is periodically varied.
On the basis of an existing compressor, the main characteristics of the needed equipment as driving motor or active power compensator have been specified.