ADVANCED UNDERGROUND VEHICLE POWER AND CONTROL: PHASE 2 - FOUNDATIONS OF FUELCELL POWER AND AUTOMATED CONTROL

Underground mining faces serious problems of vehicular power. Conventional power technologies – tethered, diesel, and battery – are not capable of simultaneously providing acceptable worker health and safety and high vehicle productivity. The fuelcell vehicle promises the mobility and energy capacity of a diesel but the environmental characteristics of the electric vehicles. As the basis of rational fuelcell vehicle design, we determined the quantitative duty cycles of four important classes of underground vehicles: loader, shuttle car, locomotive, and robotic vehicle for emergency response-and-recovery operations. Included in the analysis was the first ever duty cycle evaluation of a fuelcell-powered locomotive, a 4-ton vehicle provided through DOE project DE-FC36-99GO10458. Data gathering for the loader, shuttle car, and locomotive was performed underground in production mines under representative working conditions. Different size vehicles in each class of vehicles (except the robotic vehicle) were analyzed to fully comprehend the different energy requirements. Each duty cycle included real time power during different work segments (e.g. load, tram to ore pass, dump, and tram to chute), mean power during work segments, mean power for the entire duty cycle, and total energy as a function of time accumulated over the entire duty cycle. The duty cycle for the fuelcell locomotive was measured for comparison purposes with a battery-powered locomotive. The duty cycles for the loaders were used to establish the energy requirements for a fuelcell loader being developed under DOE project DE-FC36-01GO11095. Critical to the fuelcell loader design is the required peak power and duration as well as total energy required for a normal work shift. Vehicle Projects LLC Page 3 of 13 18-Feb-03 Project: DE-FC26-01NT41052