Whatever Happened to Fuel Cells?

[Snowden]

Whatever Happened to Fuel Cells?
By Michael Schirber, Special to LiveScience
posted: 05 November 2007 08:08 am ET



More than 100 Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell electric vehicles will be deployed by General Motors in the streets of Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, DC in the largest market test of fuel cell vehicles of its kind. Credit: General Motors.

Editor's Note: This article is part of an occasional LiveScience series about ideas to ease humanity's impact on the environment.
In 2003, President George W. Bush called for a billion-dollar initiative to make fuel cells the future replacement of the gasoline engine. These clean battery-like devices produce electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen and giving off only water.

But four years down the road, not many besides California's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have been behind the wheel of a fuel-cell car, and a big reason for this is the paucity of hydrogen fuel filling stations.

"The infrastructure is not evolving fast enough," said Britta Gross, General Motors manager of hydrogen infrastructure and strategic commercialization.

Not waiting for the so-called "hydrogen highway" to be built, GM has launched its own Project Driveway, in which 110 Chevy Equinoxes equipped with hydrogen fuel cells will be lent—at no charge—to ordinary customers for 3-month test periods.

To provide fuel, the company is installing—largely at their own expense—10 hydrogen stations in the Los Angeles and New York areas, where Driveway participants can fill up for free.





A Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell vehicle is refueled in Newport Beach, California Tuesday, October 16, 2007. Credit: General Motors.


Chicken and egg
The goal of Project Driveway is to obtain consumer feedback on fuel-cell cars, but it highlights a troublesome "chicken and egg" problem: Consumers will be reluctant to buy a fuel cell car if they don't see enough hydrogen stations around, while fuel suppliers will be reluctant to build hydrogen stations if they don't see enough fuel-cell cars around.

Jeroen Struben from the MIT Sloan School of Management has studied this and other market forces and found that they can prevent the transition to a non-gasoline infrastructure.

"There's 100 years of experience with gas filling stations," Struben told LiveScience.

The fact that people can fill their gasoline-powered cars at some 170,000 stations nationwide provides a sense of security that alternative fuels will need decades to achieve, Struben said.



Fuel cell vehicles, like this Chevy Equinox, chemically combine hydrogen fuel with oxygen from the air to make electricity. The only emission is water vapor. Credit: General Motors.

The hydrogen driveway
Although limited in scope, Project Driveway is the largest fuel-cell demonstration so far. General Motors has invested more than a billion dollars in the technology, hoping to capitalize on its unique advantages, Gross said.

Compared to normal internal combustion engines, fuel cells need no transmission—the motor turns the wheels directly. This means manufacturers have more freedom to come up with cost-effective designs.

Compared to battery-powered vehicles, fuel-cell cars can be driven farther (the Equinox can go 150 miles on a full tank of 9.3 pounds of hydrogen). To get that sort of range, a battery must be combined with a gasoline engine, as in a hybrid electric vehicle.

Fuel cells also have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions better than other current alternatives, Gross said.

However, this is only true if the hydrogen is generated from renewables, such as wind and solar energy. Currently, most hydrogen is extracted from natural gas—a process that results in about as much carbon dioxide emissions per mile driven as does burning gasoline in a car, Struben said.



Diagram of the fuel cell and hydrogen tanks in the Chevy Equinox. Credit: General Motors.


A fulfilling experience
As far as price, hydrogen could be competitive with gasoline, once the infrastructure is in place, Gross said. Most estimates assume that a pound of hydrogen (roughly the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline) will cost $2 to $3.

"Two years ago, $2 to $3 seemed expensive," Gross said, but not anymore with current gas prices.

One concern, though, has been that refueling a fuel cell can be a long and complicated procedure, as hydrogen is a highly flammable gas.

But Gross said that the Equinox can be filled in three to five minutes using a high pressure (700 bar) pump. Drivers can do it themselves, because there's a safety connecter that locks in place to prevent leaks.

Rural development
The 50 or so hydrogen stations in the United States are typically not open to the public and do not uniformly provide the high pressure that Gross considers necessary. The company is therefore rolling out 10 new stations for the start of 2008 when the first fuel cell Equinoxes will be delivered.

GM officials are already looking ahead to the next wave in 2010 to 2012 when they will release about 1,000 fuel cell vehicles. Gross said that this will require about 40 stations in and around the target areas.

Struben, the MIT researcher, is not sure those will be enough. "You need more stations than the simple calculations would suggest," he said.

In his market simulations, he found that when stations are far apart, people fill up more often just to be safe. This can cause long lines at the pump, which will discourage others from buying a fuel cell car.

To avoid this, government and industry need to provide long-term support to stations, especially in rural areas where "they might not be profitable for the first 10 to 20 years," Struben said.


http://www.livescience.com/environment/071105-fuel-cell.html

[Anth]

Fuel cells, something I will someday have to think about in great detail and we may actually cover in the final year of my Motorsport Technology degree. While they may sound like the saving grace of the fuel world, there's actually a great number of problems.

First is the infrastructure - it doesn't exist. Go to remote places in Russia or Africa and you will find people pumping petrol by hand. Now remove the petrol, because currently there's no hydrogen supplies anyway. All of the supplies would have to be established and not just on a piecemeal basis like one filling station per state or county - a small city would probably need a third of the number of petrol stations in "hydrogen stations" for people to take notice and actually be able to fill up their tanks.

Second is cost. How much does a petrol tank cost to manufacture? In the numbers they are made, we are talking less than a dollar to cut/mould two metal sheets and weld them together using a press and robot welder. Process probably takes 45 seconds. How much would it cost to make a fuel cell? No idea, but with it being a new technology it would be a heck of a lot higher simply because setup costs will be factored into the first few hundred thousand (at least) and we aren't talking a new set of dies or a new forge - we are talking entire new factories, with machines costing in the region of $5m. Those setup costs will put off even the biggest manufacturer without even having to do a full feasibility study. Remember that the more it costs to make something, the more you as the customer will have to pay for it, and customers are only willing to pay so much.

Next up is design - remember the weird and wonderful designs from the 1950's when everyone thought we'd be using nuclear powered cars by now, or jet engines? We'd have that kind of problem again until designers finally worked out how to get the best out of the new technology. Chances are we'd end up using a mid-engined, aerodynamically sound, lightweight box on wheels - nobody wants to be driving a Smart car now, do they? The fuel cell will actually make the cars smaller and even more lightweight - a transmission replaced by a rotary potentiometer (read: variable resistor) at the top of your accelerator pedal gets rid of that lot and puts a very simple loop of wire in its place. I suppose it could reduce the cost a bit, but not much in the grand scheme of replacing probably 2/3rds of the manufacturing hardware...

Then we have safety. Has anyone actually done impact tests on these cells or the cars they're in? If so, how does it react to a 200mph impact (2 cars doing 100mph in opposing directions colliding head on), or to a side-swipe? How safe is it if someone torches your car at night, and is it liable to go BOOM and take out your garage, house and half the street?

Finally, for now at least, there is the psychological factor - are you going to buy one of these fuel-cell cars or are you going to stay away from this new-fangled technology? Personally I'm quite happy with internal combustion. Might be dirty, but I know I can rip an engine to pieces and find out what's wrong with it without taking it to a garage. Similarly, I can take a milling machine to the block or a Dremel to the head and make it go a heck of a lot faster. Can you do that with a fuel cell? Not if you value your life!!!

[Snowden]

Thanks, Anth. I did hope they were somehow rather magical, I think! But I believe we can get those problems solved.

Well, not 'we,' exactly -- but you and your lot, engineers; you all will solve it, I wager.

[Old Fart]

Eventually, a small portion of the world will have fuell cell cars but lets talk about the rest.
Most of the emerging 3rd world countries are just now reaching the place where more than just the rich can even have A CAR. These will be the cheapest, easiest to produce vehicles available, Fossil Fueled Vehicles.
Alternative fuel vehicles are still 20 years down the road for the masses in the more sophisticated countries, (USA, Britain, Eurpoe, Japan, etc.)
WE HAVE the crude oil recources right here in and around the USA to last us at least another 20 years while these alternative fuel cars are being developed.
You want to see lower gas prices? all it would take is a Press release that states "The American Government has decided to go ahead with oil exploration in Alaska and along the coasts of the US".
OPEC is a one trick Pony the only commodity they have to sell IS OIL! If we were to get into the "Oil business" in a real serious manner and put a real dent in our foreigh dependence on OPEC oil, geopolitical "politics" would change in a heartbeat!