Assistant U.S. Secretary of Energy David Garman (center) runs an energy economy and emissions test on a hybrid-electric car’s powertrain. With him in the Advanced Powertrain Research facility are Argonne Director Hermann Grunder (seated) and Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and Environmental Science and Technology Harvey Drucker.

Powertrain facility is open for business

North America’s only independent testing facility for engines, fuel cells, electric drives and energy storage is open for business at Argonne.

The Advanced Powertrain Research Facility features state-of-the-art performance and emissions measurement equipment for developing advanced engine and transmission technology for cars and trucks.

“This facility provides researchers with the tools needed to develop and evaluate vehicle components that will meet America’s changing transportation needs,” said Richard Moorer, DOE deputy assistant secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The goal is to develop clean, reliable and affordable transportation.

The facility’s sophisticated emissions testing system for gas- and diesel-powered vehicles measures exhaust particulates and emissions in the parts per billion—hundreds of times cleaner than today’s average car.

Similar instrumentation is used at vehicle manufacturers’ research facilities, but this is the only place in North America that combines the best available emissions instrumentation with the capability of testing such a wide range of fuels, including gasoline, hydrogen, natural gas and diesel.

“This unique combination of analytical, development and testing experience provides the latest techniques to evaluate new vehicle technologies,” said Bob Larsen, director of Argonne’s Center for Transportation Research.

Evaluating virtual fuel-cell cars
Engineers are testing a virtual fuel-cell vehicle to determine its energy storage needs. Clean-operating fuel cells, which are expected to run cars in the next decade, are like batteries that run on hydrogen gas. A fuel cell can power the entire car, not just the starter and accessories as today’s car batteries do.

Using Argonne-created software, a virtual fuel cell “powers” a real car on a dynamometer. The dynamometer simulates a road course and measures the vehicle’s energy use. “This is just one illustration of the power of combining real and virtual components to explore the technical requirements of an entire powertrain system without having to build a complete vehicle,” Larsen explained. “These simulations allow us to vary a fuel cell’s capabilities without building a series of test cells.”

Exotic fuels for trucks
The facility’s engineers are testing trucks that run on varying combinations of hydrogen and natural gas—for example 50 percent hydrogen and 50 percent natural gas—in an internal combustion engine to determine the cleanest and most powerful combination.

Instruments in the new Advanced Powertrain Research Facility include:

• a four-wheel-drive dynamometer system, which allows road load simulation, monitoring, tractive effort, coastdown and calibration modes for two- and four-wheel-drive vehicles up to 14,000 pounds; and
• a data acquisition system, designed for testing fuel cell, hybrid electric and electric vehicles.

This research is funded by the FreedomCar Vehicle Technologies program in DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

For more information, please contact Evelyn Brown.

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