Fuel Cell Drone for Soil Monitoring

Fuel Cell Drone for Soil Monitoring

Cheung, Louis (TU Delft Applied Sciences; TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

Aravind, P.V. (mentor)
Bhattacharya, Nandini (graduation committee)
Remes, Bart (graduation committee)
Tambi, Yash (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

2020-05-29

We have set out to develop a drone, based on the existing Delftacopter, capable of soil monitoring via LiDAR remote sensing. The battery was to be replaced by a fuel cell system in order to extend the range threefold to 180km. Unfortunately, the ultimate design is likely unfeasible. Agriculture requires healthy soil and monitoring soil health is fundamental to its maintenance. Soil organic carbon in particular provides energy to the soil’s microorganisms, and is beneficial to water and nutrient retention. In addition, storing carbon in the soil is a form of carbon sequestration, which has become interesting due to the rising levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Monitoring soil organic carbon is therefore the goal of the drone design. The fuel cell system is a 650Whydrogen fuel cell by Intelligent Energy with a mass of 1290 g, which will be replacing the battery in the base design. Fuel tanks that were considered suitable are the 450 g, 0.5 L, 500 bar and 1350 g, 3 L, 300 bar fuel tanks by Meyer. It was found that one 1350 g and two 450 g fuel tanks were necessary to achieve the desired range of 180 km. However, after more careful drag estimates, this configuration turns out to be too heavy. 4 450 g fuel tanks remains feasible. Results below are based on this amount of fuel tanks. The incorporated LiDAR sensor is one by Velodyne, namely the Puck LITE, with a specified range of 100 m. The LiDAR sensor has a firing cycle of 55.296 &s, almost 20 kHz. Based on previous studies that used LiDAR to measure soil organic carbon, it has been established that a density of 5 data points per square meter is required. Fromour LiDAR parameters it turns out that the optimal flight altitude is 27.5mabove the surface that is to be measured, with a rotation rate of 10 Hz for the LiDAR sensor, when flying at a speed of 20ms¡1. With a flight distance of roughly 116km at 22.5ms¡1 (111km at 20ms¡1), an area of 21.8km2 per flight can be scanned. 1

Fuel Cell Aircraft
LIDAR

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a191b5fc-4050-44b8-9652-4493d44b654c

Student theses

master thesis

© 2020 Louis Cheung