GTRI’s Battery and Fuel Cell Technology Laboratory Facility is equipped with an array of instrumentation and safety systems to support to the design, development, and testing of battery, fuel cell, and hybrid power systems. The facility provides the infrastructure (e.g. 400 kW of prime power, circulating chilled water, deionized water, distributed specialty gases, and approved ventilation and safety systems) needed to develop and characterize prototype or production assemblies. Equipment includes potentiostats, galvanometers, test stations, power systems analyzers, and gas chromatographs that have been selected to support the design, development, and testing of battery and fuel cell systems.
In addition to numerous electronics and mechanical systems laboratories, GTRI has three laboratory facilities that are uniquely suited to the development of power and energy systems. The Power Electronics Laboratory Facility and High Power Laboratory Facility are two of the best-equipped facilities in the country dedicated to the characterization, development, and testing of power electronic components, assemblies. These facilities offer equipment such as liquid cooling, multi-voltage prime power at both 60 and 400 Hz, programmable AC and DC sources, state-of-the-art power systems analyzers and a wide array of voltage, current, temperature and transient recoding instrumentation.
This facility is perfect for testing hybrid systems as it contains an array of computer-controlled power supplies and loads that range from 2 kW units for characterizing stack elements to a research-grade 150 kW system capable of testing large battery packs and fuel cells. The 150 kW system (an AVS ABC-150) can either operate as a computer-controlled DC source for charging battery packs, supplying invertors, or testing propulsion devices, or as a high-resolution load bank for battery, fuel cell, or hybrid systems. A variety of scenarios and driving cycles can be simulated using the ABC-150.
A modular reformer system is also operational within the laboratory that can be used to rapidly evaluate reformer methodologies. This facility also is certified to transmit power onto the electrical grid, which allows the operation and characterization of distributed generation equipment.
The capabilities of Battery and Fuel Cell Technologies laboratory are being enhanced by the construction of the Fuel Cell Systems Laboratory Facility. The fuel Cell Systems Laboratory has been designed to accommodate a wide array of stationary and mobile fuel cell systems with output capacities of up to 100 kW. This facility will provide all of the necessary infrastructure to develop such systems including fuel (hydrogen, propane, diesel, JP8, methane, natural gas, simulated reformates), high-pressure high-volume compressed air supplies, liquid-cooling systems capable of removing 785,000 BTU/hr, 400 kVA of prime power (approved for bidirectional feed), de-ionized water supplies, programmable load banks capable of simulating driving cycles, combustible exhaust removal systems, and instrumented test stands capable of supplying fully-humidified fuel and air supplies at either atmospheric or elevated pressures.
An adjoining High Bay Assembly Area is capable of supporting large commercial and military vehicles. This facility contains all necessary equipment to support these systems, to include cranes, a full machine shop, complete welding and fabrication tools, large quantities of prime power, high volume coolant supplies, and engine dynamometers. GTRI has developed and modified a wide range of vehicles and military equipment in this facility, including large tracked vehicles, semi-trailers. truck-mounted equipment shelters, hybrid electric busses, and cargo containers.
