Horizon Fuel Cell Uses NI LabVIEW and USB Data Acquisition to Test Toy Cars

Author(s):
Placido Jin - Shanghai Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies Company

Industry:
Consumer Goods

Products:
Software, LabVIEW, USB Cable

The Challenge:
Developing and implementing a test system over a short period of time for the H-Racer, the industry’s first fuel cell-powered toy car.

The Solution:
Using the NI LabVIEW graphical development platform and the NI USB-6008 multifunction data acquisition module to quickly develop a flexible test system for fuel cells.

In recent years, fuel cells have received increased attention as a clean alternative energy source. Compared with traditional energy, fuel cells have many remarkable benefits. The power of the fuel cell comes from hydrogen, which can be extracted from many regenerative resources and whose conversion to electricity does not produce pollution. These features make fuel cells an ideal alternative energy source for transportation, portable power, business and residence uses, and many other innovative applications.

Horizon Fuel Cell is committed to the industrialization of miniature proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC). Its flagship product incorporating PEMFC technology, the H-racer, was named “Best Invention of 2006” by TIME Magazine.

During the early stages of development, it was apparent that the H-racer would be the industry’s first fuel cell-powered toy car. Timely production and quality were of utmost concern. Due to the project schedule and urgent production task, Horizon Fuel Cell engineers had to develop and implement a test system over a short period of time. Efficiency was crucial in developing this test system, because it was bottlenecking our entire production system.

The H-racer Fuel Cell Toy Car

The sleek, 6 in. long H-racer is powered by hydrogen from the electrolytes of pure water and can travel more than 300 ft when fully charged. Because of the miniature size of the model racer, only a small amount of hydrogen fuel is needed, making it safe for indoor use. Each H-racer kit comes equipped with a solar hydrogen recharger, so it is an ideal product for educating both children and adults about renewable energy and fuel cell technology.

The core component of the car is a PEMFC. The solar recharger is responsible for generating and storing hydrogen extracted from water. By using a catalyst, hydrogen is separated into protons and electrons at the anode (negative pole). The protons are attracted by the strong charge of oxygen gas and flow through a proton exchange membrane to arrive at the cathode (positive pole).

Meanwhile, the electrons are conducted through the anode, where they make their way through the external circuit (in this case, the H-racer’s motor working and generating current, to then return to the cathode. There they combine with oxygen and protons to reform water molecules.

Test Process

Given the complexity of this new technology, our engineers experimented with multiple methods during the manufacturing test process. At the early stage of development, R&D staff tested the fuel cell with a simple handheld measurement device. While this approach worked for individual verification, this extremely slow, unreliable process could not meet our production test requirements. 

The test system was essential to the whole manufacturing test plan because any minor error in the production test could result in serious consequences. Additionally, we were still under a time constraint of two weeks to complete the design and begin manufacturing.

NI Software and Hardware

Our Horizon Fuel Cell engineers chose LabVIEW as the best environment for test system development. As a graphical programming language with an intuitive block diagram, LabVIEW reduced our programming complexity and offered fast development and maintenance. And the USB-6008 plug-and-play analog input portable data acquisition module, combined with the NI-DAQmx driver, gave us a high-performance, low-cost solution.  

With this setup, we were able to rapidly develop our test system and immediately implement production line tests, which check for accurate fuel cell parameters including open voltage, load voltage, load current, and power. And through built-in analysis functions, we were able to analyze the performance and efficiency of the charging and discharging process and use that data to aid further improvement. 

A Flexible Test Platform to Reduce Test Time and Cost

With LabVIEW and the USB-6008, it took only two weeks to develop the test system from requirements analysis, architecture design, and detailed design to hardware purchasing, debugging, and trial run.

Furthermore, we used the same software and hardware platform for the manufacturing test phase, which provided consistent and timely support for the final production system. The current output of the product has reached 10,000 pieces per month.

With the flexibility of the NI platform, we were also able to integrate the test system with the ISO/TS-16949 quality management system to test most of the failure modes quickly. The benefits of the NI hardware and software development platform impressed us; we enjoyed the fast development, robustness, ease of use, quick learning curve, and good maintainability.

Horizon Fuel Cell plans to standardize with NI hardware and software platforms to provide test solutions for future manufacturing and development projects.

Author Information:
For more information on this Case Study, contact:
Placido Jin
Shanghai Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies Company
placido@horizonfuelcell.com

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