Thermodynamic Analysis of a Renewable Energy-Driven Electric Vehicle Charging Station with On-Site Electricity Generation from Hydrogen and Ammonia Fuel Cells

Abstract

The vast implementation of electric vehicles (EVs) greatly depends on developing sustainable and green EV charging stations. This study pro-poses to develop and assess an off-grid and renewable energy-driven EV charging station, which is hybridized with hydrogen and ammonia fuel cells. Chemical energies of hydrogen and ammonia are stored in the stor-age tanks to be used in the hydrogen and ammonia fuel cells. The de-signed hybrid system is capable of storing energy in the chemical form when there is excess production. Ammonia is stored in liquid form rather than gaseous form, which reduces the storage tank capacity considerably and decreases the losses. The designed system, which includes a wind turbine, concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) and fuel cells, can produce about 1.1 MW of power and 15.46 MWh of electricity in a single day, corresponding to about 294 number of EVs. In addition, the hybrid sys-tem can charge up to 644 EVs if the ammonia feed rate is increased to 0.1 kg/s. The fuel cells are capable of generating about 80% of the charging station. The effects of important key parameters such as wind speed, so-lar irradiance and fuel supply rates are investigated to observe the im-pacts on the overall system.