Renewable Energy Taiwan

Project Introduction: Energy efficiency is becoming an increasingly important issue worldwide. Renewable energy solutions, such as solar cells, wind power, and fuel cells are good alternatives over traditional energy sources to further this cause. Fuel cells are electrochemical cells that converts source fuels into electrical currents. They generate electricity through reactions between a fuel and an oxidant. One Taiwanese fuel cell manufacturer is building a standalone distributed power generation station using fuel cells as the energy source. This fuel cell power generation could be located in parks, hotels, public institutes or even homes.

System Requirements:

The client wants to build a complete system to monitor and control the fuel cell reaction process. A reliable controller is needed because the power station is located far from control center room. Other system requirements include:

1. The ability to easily deploy the system using the LabVIEW graphical development environment
2. Possible to maintain and manage the station remotely through Ethernet
3. Compact and robust controller and I/O with hot-swapped functionality
4. Data logging both remotely and locally

Project Implementation:

	APAX-5570XPE	PC-based Controller with Celeron M CPU
	ADAM-5017	12-ch Analog Input Module
	ADAM-5018	12-ch Thermocouple Input Module
	ADAM-5045	24-ch Digital Input/Output Module

System Diagram:

System Description:
The source fuel (reactant, here is hydrogen) flows into the cell, generates electricity by the reaction through the oxidant (here it it’s the air controlled by a pump). The APAX-5045 Digital Output module is used to control the valve and the pump, controlling the reaction process. Pressure sensors connected to the APAX-5017 Analog Input module monitors how much hydrogen is flowing into the cell. The generated electricity is measured by the APAX-5017 module, making the system capable to calculate power generation efficiency. The output electricity can be used on the load, or transfer to alternating current for usage. During the reaction, a fan is needed to control the environment temperature to ensure the best power generation efficiency. APAX-5045 can be used to control the cooling fan, and APAX-5018 can trace the environment temperature. APAX-5570XPE features an open platform which makes it easy to perform data storage. Combined with a wireless AP, data on APAX-5570XPE can be transferred to remote PC.

Conclusion:
The APAX-5570XPE allows engineers to seamlessly develop programs through LabVIEW and execute on APAX-5570XPE without additional effort. Advantech’s APAX series helped this client shorten the time-to-market, because engineers can leverage their knowledge of LabVIEW. Openness and flexibility are perfectly combined with reliable features. Another important benefit brought by this Advantech solution is that APAX analog modules can be configured with different channels with different input types and ranges. This helps clients save stock, costs and installation space.