Assessment of an Integrated Cooling/HVAC Circuit for Electric Heavy Quadricycles

Within the last decades, an always increasing attention has been addressed to the development and market diffusion of alternative powertrains, either hybrid or fully electric. Especially for electric powertrains some open points are nowadays still present with respect to thermal management and cabin comfort, which are intended to be addressed in the present study. This is the reason why the European Commission is striving the research towards the development of innovative and efficient electric powertrains. Within this framework, the REFLECTIVE project aims at developing an electric heavy quadricycle equipped with a HVAC module integrated with the powertrain/charging cooling system, with the aim of reusing part of the heat generated at the powertrain during driving conditions to heat up the cabin, with the consequence of reducing the thermal power requested at the electric cabin heater to fulfil this task. Although an additional heat exchanger is required, it is possible to guarantee a certain amount of heat preventing the use of the battery for the electrical heater activation. Moreover, the battery thermal management as well can be done also using hot/fresh air generated by the HVAC sub-system. By this way, several thermal loads can be managed through the same integrated circuit with apparent benefit in terms of energetic efficiency, despite some complexity is introduced. The aim of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of this solution on the vehicle range and battery state of charge, through the integration of a 1-D model of the cooling circuit with a 0-D model of the entire vehicle. Different driving conditions, namely summer and winter scenarios and different speed profiles, will be considered. Results show that the HVAC and cooling systems have a huge effect on range reduction with respect to the range estimated, but at the same time, but the benefit of the recuperator can be also assessed.