Hydrogen Fuel Cell

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Permalink Reply by Harvey on August 22, 2008 at 9:15am

You are all assuming a dead battery. An unlikely situation.
Most people would recharge after a day of use, maybe even sooner (go to work and recharge at work, go home and recharge at home.) Remember, the average commute is less than 30 miles.
That would encourage places like shopping malls to install special parking spaces for electric cars to entice the shoppers to their stores.
Recharge while shopping. (No woman takes less than an hour in a mall.....lol)
Battery management would come into play. A change from the 'run until empty' mentality of gasoline powered cars to a 'keep me full' mind set.
As pointed out, higher voltages and/or amperages would speed up the recharge rate.
A solar array, with battery backup, could be tailored to recharge the car at home. It could be part of an array to also provide the house with power.
Public charging stations, like the ones installed for the first round of electric cars here in California, could be set up with the required voltages and amperage range. We still have a surcharge on our power bills for them, might as well put them back in service.

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Permalink Reply by neil cox on August 22, 2008 at 4:18pm

Adapting the numbers in the previous posts to recharging at 90% full instead of 10% full: 10 hours becomes one hour charging at 43 amps and a timer can do the charging after midnight when the utility may charge a reduced rate.
The 1000 amps at 400 volts only takes 90 seconds to charge the battery instead of 15 minutes.
The 54 amps for 15 minutes can be at 1100 volts instead of 11,000 volts. Yes charging an electric car after driving 20 miles instead of 200 miles has many advantages.
Your solar panels can charge your car during the day if you work night shift or graveyard shift. For day shift workers the solar panels need to be where you park your car while at work. The electricity can be sold to the utility, Saturday, Sunday, and holidays when few or none are in the corporate parking lot.
Solar typically is twice as costly as fossil fuel, unless the Sun shines brightly 5 hours per day on the average. Neil

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Permalink Reply by Cobraphx (Matt) on August 23, 2008 at 12:24pm

People proclaim electric cars can't work due to long recharge times and less than 500 mile range. The truth is that at least 50% of commuters don't need more than 100 mile range and can recharge overnight in their garage, they don't need to recharge only when empty. They rarely even drive 100 miles at a time without an overnight stay. And even if they had to, they actually could recharge somewhere (because electricity is available in nearly every city in the US), as opposed to Hydrogen that's currently at less than 10 refueling stations nationwide and a few industrial gas suppliers like Air Liquide. People still run out of gas occasionally even though there are 117,000 gas stations nationwide. How many Hydrogen stations do we need to have the same coverage when H2 vehicles will likely have shorter range than gasoline vehicles? 200,000? I'm just guessing here, but there are probably something like 1-2 billion electrical outlets in the US.

My point is, that there is no infrastructure for Hydrogen, while the infrastructure for Electric Vehicles already exists and is used every day. Now the electrical grid will need upgrades sure, but that's way easier and cheaper than building a hydrogen refueling infrastructure from scratch. And think about all the other things that won't transition from gasoline to Hydrogen like lawn mowers, looking forward to a hydrogen powered lawn mower? You can already buy an electric one today. How about a Fuel Cell drill, because it has to be better than batteries right?

As for fuel cells, they have to advance a fair amount to be practical in vehicles, especially in terms of cost. Then here are also the breakthroughs needed in hydrogen storage, 10,000psi isn't something I want in my car or to have to fill up at a gas station. Batteries are already at the point they are being commercialized in Electric Vehicles, and in Extended Range Electric Vehicles. More work needs to be done on battery price, but they are already a factor of 10-50 cheaper than fuel cells. Granted, for people that have to drive 200 miles a day every day, there aren't any EV vehicles that fit that bill right now. But there aren't any FCV's that will work either.

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Permalink Reply by Kenneth Koch on August 23, 2008 at 7:11pm

A volt will travel 40 miles on a 6 hour charge. A Clarity will travel 270 miles on a 5 minute re-fuel. It's just a question of which energy storage method is more desirable. I hope that this choice will be left up to the market place.

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Permalink Reply by Cobraphx (Matt) on August 24, 2008 at 1:13am

Exactly right, the Volt has a 40-50 mile highly efficient (well to wheel) electric range. When the electric range is depleted, it has an infinite range on fossil fuel with a 2 min refilling time. You aren't tied to your local gas station or your power plug with the Volt.

The Clarity has a 270 mile range (much less efficient well to wheel than the Volt's electric mode though) with a super convenient 5 minute refill time if you happen to be near one of the 10 H2 refueling stations in the Nation. If you leave LA (where there are a couple stations) in your FCX Clarity for Phoenix, Arizona, you will get about 3/4 of the way, (a few miles east of Quarztsite) where your trip will abruptly end. That is unless a Hydrogen tank truck comes along to refuel you.

So the 270 mile range of the Clarity is a moot point. Unless you are driving 120 miles from your local H2 station and then straight back to the station, you don't really have a 270 mile range. if you live 30 miles from the closest H2 station, you waste 60 mile of that 270 mile range just getting your tank filled when it's low. Sounds Brilliant!

For the space shuttle certainly and maybe for trains, airplanes and cargo ships H2 might be the way to go. They all refuel at only a few places and have pretty restricted routes. Cars don't, we want to drive where we want when we want. Without a refueling infrastructure H2 won't be the replacement for gasoline. Electricity on the other hand is available everywhere.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Johnston on August 24, 2008 at 8:00am

You are assuming both the current vehicle technology and that H2 has to be stored, transported and distributed as a gas.

If you allow for new technology then H2 can be a viable fuel. For example, on-board reformers produce H2 from water and a hydrocarbon on the fly and this eliminates all of the infrastructure difficulties.

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Permalink Reply by Harvey on August 24, 2008 at 9:45am

And where, exactly, do you get the power to do the reforming?
And what hydrocarbon?
And where do you store all of that stuff?

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Permalink Reply by Kenneth Koch on August 24, 2008 at 10:12am

More H2 fuel stations can be available in the future. A 10,000 PSI fuel tank would double the range of the Calrity, It's not LOT less efficeint well to wheel, (15% maybe), and it's still more efficeint than an ICE. If we use solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear there is no well. If electricity or NG is available, H2 can be made available. Why so negative?

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Permalink Reply by Cobraphx (Matt) on August 24, 2008 at 10:54am

Using clean electricity to make, store and transport H2 for use in FCV, requires 3 to 5 (or more) times as much electricity per vehicle mile as using the electric grid to transport the electricity and use to drive a Battery Electric Vehicle. The FCV is an electric car, it has an electric motor, and a battery just like a battery electric vehicle. But it is crippled with the addition of a large, dangerous H2 tank and a fuel cell that can extract only 50% of the energy provided to it. Whereas a battery can extract 95% of the energy provided to it.

Using Hydrogen to deliver electricity is akin to telling me you think ethanol is the future automotive fuel. But the pure ethanol produced at the plant needs to be diluted with water by 50% (like the hydrogen electrolyzer) in order to transport it. Then it will be stored in open containers and allow a bit to evaporate off (being the smallest molecule H2 leaks and evaporates easily). When it gets in my vehicle we'll use power to boil the alcohol to remove the water so that my vehicle can run on pure alcohol (like the Fuel Cell only returning 50% of the energy left in the H2).

If our current vehicles were 3 times as efficient as they are now, we wouldn't be importing oil, simple as that. The entire reason we have a imported fuel problem is the low efficiency of our current vehicles. Why try to design a replacement for them that is much less efficient than competing clean technologies, which are already further along and currently becoming available in the marketplace?

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Permalink Reply by Kenneth Koch on August 24, 2008 at 11:26am

Matt,

What is the effiency of whatever is creating the electricity for your battery?

NG can be used to create H2.

The Chevy volt goes 40 miles with a 150+ pound battery. The Honda Clarity goes 35 miles on a pound of H2 stored in a light wieght carbon fiber tank. The Chevy Volt has a range of 40 miles (battery only), then it takes 6 hours to charge. The Honda Carity has a range of 270 miles and take minutes to re-fuel.

I agrree that a battery is 3 times more effecient than H2, but their energy density sucks, they are slow to charge, the charge leaks off, they are expensive (as is FCs) and their liftime is fairley limited.

BTW:
I think the Chevy Volt is a GREAT step forward, and I hope that the energy density of the lithium ion battery improves with new silicon nanotube technology.

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Permalink Reply by Cobraphx (Matt) on August 24, 2008 at 3:18pm

Just out of curiosity, how close to the closest Hydrogen refueling station do you live? For me the closest public refueling station is about 370 miles. But the plug to charge the GM Volt is about 5 feet from where I park my daily drive every night right now.

What is the effiency of whatever is creating the electricity for your battery?

In the case of using Wind Power, Solar and Nuclear... the creation efficiency is exactly the same whether you make H2 or use that power on the grid. If you make H2 out of that clean power to be consumed in a FCV you will get 1/3/ to 1/5 of the miles per kWh of power generated at the source than in an equivalent Battery Electric Vehicle. You are adding two energy conversion steps (one 60% and one 50% efficient) and a much less efficient distribution system when turning electricity into H2 and then H2 back to electricity to move a vehicle.

I agrree that a battery is 3 times more effecient than H2, but their energy density sucks, they are slow to charge, the charge leaks off, they are expensive (as is FCs) and their liftime is fairley limited.

I like the arguments that pit current production battery technology, with fuel cell technology that can't be produced commercially. For example:
"the charge leaks off" Hydrogen leaks off just like batteries, especially if it is stored in a liquid form (the most efficient form of hydrogen to transport.). Liquid Hydrogen evaporates at the rate of 1-2% per day, tough to keep it a temp of −252.87°C.

"they are expensive" Sure, current batteries are expensive, but current fuel cells are tens to hundreds of times more expensive.

"their liftime is fairley limited" The lifetime of the cells in the Tesla Roadster are supposed to be 120,000 miles or more, and these cells aren't designed for EV use, EV specific batteries will be better. What's the lifetime of a Fuel Cell? Is it 40,000 miles? 300,000? I haven't seen any evidence that it will be longer than a battery, and the FCV also has one of those batteries and "their liftime is fairley limited". How is this better?

"their energy density sucks", true.. current batteries could be a lot better. But they are good enough for vehicle like the Volt and they will get better. The energy density of Hydrogen isn't exactly spectacular and it isn't going to change.

The Chevy volt goes 40 miles with a 150+ pound battery. The Honda Clarity goes 35 miles on a pound of H2 stored in a light wieght carbon fiber tank.How much does the tank, fuel cell, plumbing, filters and heater weigh? That system is part of the Clarity's "Hydrogen Battery", you can't compare weight without factoring that in.

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Permalink Reply by Kenneth Koch on August 24, 2008 at 4:05pm

You did not address charging time or range. Battery powered with a range extending re-fuelable power source seems to be acceptable. If the range extending device was a fuel cell it would be more efficeint than an ICE. agreed? If the range extending device was using CNG that would be better for the US. agrreed?

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