Renewable Energy and Sustainability

Model the thermal management system of a battery electric vehicle.

This demo shows an Electric Vehicle (EV) battery cooling system. The battery packs are located on top of a cold plate which consists of cooling channels to direct the cooling liquid flow below the battery packs. The heat absorbed by the cooling liquid is transported to the Heating-Cooling Unit. The Heating-Cooling Unit consists of three branches to switch operating modes to cool and heat the battery. The Heater represents an electrical heater for fast heating of the batteries under low temperature conditions. The Radiator uses air-cooling and/or heating when the batteries are operated stably. The Refrigerant system is used for cooling the overheated batteries. The refrigeration cycle is represented by the amount of heat flow extracted from the cooling liquid. The system is simulated under either FTP-75 drive cycle or fast charge scenarios with different environment temperatures.

Models a grid-scale energy storage system based on cryogenic liquid air. When there is excess power, the system liquefies ambient air based on a variation of the Claude cycle. The cold liquid air is stored in a low-pressure insulated tank until needed. When there is high power demand, the system expands the stored liquid air to produce power based on the Rankine cycle.

Model the cogeneration of electrical power and heat using a hybrid PV/T solar panel. The generated heat is transferred to water for household consumption.

Model a proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell stack with a custom library and custom Simscape domain. The custom library includes blocks that are tailored to fuel cell modeling. The custom domain models a 4-species gas mixture that contains nitrogen (N2), oxygen (O2), hydrogen (H2), and water vapor (H2O).

Models an air source heat pump system that is used to heat a residential building having hot-water radiators for heat distribution. The two-phase fluid refrigerant takes up heat from the environment moist air mixture and transfers heat to water. The compressor drives the R410a refrigerant through a condenser, a thermostatic expansion valve, and an evaporator. An accumulator ensures that only vapor returns to the compressor.

Models a ground source heat pump system that is used to heat a residential building having hot-water radiators for heat distribution. The ground source heat pump uses R410a, a two-phase fluid refrigerant, as the working fluid. The heat pump takes up the naturally existing heat stored in the ground and transfers the heat to the hot-water radiators. The compressor drives the refrigerant through a condenser, a thermostatic expansion valve, and an evaporator. An accumulator ensures that only vapor returns to the compressor.

Models a hydrogen refueling station. Hydrogen is stored in low-pressure storage tanks at 200 bar at the station. A 3-stage intercooled compressor maintains the necessary pressure in a cascade buffer storage system so that the station is ready to dispatch hydrogen to any connected vehicles. The buffer is divided into high-pressure tanks at 950 bar, medium-pressure tanks at 650 bar, and low-pressure tanks at 450 bar. To avoid wasting compression energy, the lowest pressure buffer that is greater than the vehicle tank pressure is used to dispatch hydrogen. Priority valves switches between the different buffer tanks to control which buffer tanks to fill and discharge from.