Alt Car Expo 2007: Fuel Cell technology panel - starring Q'orianka Kilcher
Moderated by Leslie Goodbody from the California Air Resources Board, the Hydrogen/Fuel Cell Technology Panel at the Santa Monica Alt Car Expo featured three speakers (plus one). Each of them gave an upbeat view of hydrogen cars. Big surprise.
Steve Ellis, American Honda Motor Company manager of Honda's fuel cell program. teased (once again, for those of us who are paying attention) the story that Honda will be offering a fuel cell car to consumers in 2008. This means that people who aren't Q'orianka Kilcher, the young movie star who also spoke at the panel, will be able to drive a hydrogen fuel cell, if they're keen on the idea. Details, unsurprisingly, are still under wraps.
Vasilios Manousiouthakis, from UCLA's Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department and the Hydrogen Engineering Research Consortium, also participated. You may notice that that last group acronyms down to HERC, and Manousiouthakis compared the task in front of HERC and, by extension, to other groups and companies working on hydrogen fuel cell cars, to Hercules cleaning the Augean stables (i.e., Hercules' fifth labor, AKA a real pain in the butt). But in an upbeat way.
Chris White, from the California Fuel Cell Partnership, explained that when the California Fuel Cell Partnership began a few years ago, hydrogen wasn't the only fuel they looked at. But, after looking at the alternatives, decided that hydrogen was the most efficient way to use a fuel cell. And the future is looking positive.
As always, the most interesting part of the panel came in the Q&A. Attendees wanted to know: What to do with excess carbon in the hydrogen production process? What problems remain to be solved in bringing fuel cell cars to market? Does electrolysis require freshwater or can saltwater be used? And so on.
Listen here.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Turbofrog 7:02PM (10/21/2007)
Electrolysis actually requires salt water if you want to do it at a reasonable pace. The salt acts as a catalyst for the reaction.
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Chris M 11:05PM (10/21/2007)
While an ionic substance (salt, acid, alkali) can improve conductivity, thereby improving electrolysis, salt is not recommended. It can trigger the production of sodium hypochlorite bleach - indeed, industrial electrolysis of salt water is the main source of bleach. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hypochlorite
If the salt concentration gets too high, the reaction can produce chlorine gas and sodium hydroxide. If the temperature gets too high, it can form sodium chlorate. There are better things to use.
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Chris M 11:20PM (10/21/2007)
The Hydrogen Engineering Research Consortium (HERC) has a lot of problems they must attempt to solve, including high costs, storage problems, infrastructure planning and construction, financing, and safety issues. But their biggest problem by far is trying to persuade the general public to ignore all the other options that are just as clean, but far cheaper and much more efficient.
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Mik_Cal 1:01AM (10/22/2007)
Too bad they fooled that hot young actress into pitching hydrogen.
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BlackbirdHighway 6:45AM (10/22/2007)
Almost all hydrogen is not made by electrolysis; it is made from natural gas. Why this is any better than simply running the car on natural gas has never been explained to my satisfaction. Unless it is merely a way to get lots of PR and government subsidies. Ok, I've answered my own question, haven't I?
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summazooma 7:12AM (10/22/2007)
You ask why hydrogen should get any attention at all, despite it's current pitfalls (currently produced most through CNG reformation and/or more expensive than other options)?
First of all, it's true that CNG reformation is neither as clean or inexpensive as ultimate hydrogen production needs to be in order to attain real commercial viability.
However, as with most technologies, we're still in an embryonic state with Hydrogen production (as well as lightweight, inexpensive and long-life battery technologies), the development of which depends on something more than the laboratory, out of which a fully-matured truly-New Technology NEVER emerges. If you kill Hydrogen because of it's relative adolescence, you might as well kill anything other than gasoline I.C.E.-powered personal transportation, which is as far from the long-term solution as Hydrogen is...
Critics of new technologies before they've ever matured are really suspect, as far as I'm concerned, and should really stick to their fantasy leagues where they can trade on potential or lack of potential, based solely on current performance, freely.
DISCLAIMER: I work for a car company with programs "investigating" all of the alternative propulsion systems currently in vogue. Though I do not exclusively endorse one over the other, I believe that, long term, any of them can be a viable alternative, as long as technology is allowed to mature and build up economies of scale. Ironically enough, Hybrid Electric vehicles (and Honda's CNG Civic, for another) are truly intriguing because of their symbolism as a step towards gaseous-fueled Fuel Cell (Hybrid) Electric vehicles... Electric vehicles are great but, even there, the lessons learned will only make FCEVs better and more viable.
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BlackbirdHighway 8:49AM (10/22/2007)
summazooma, I used to think the same way; let's try all the available alternatives until we find the one that works best.
But as I have researched into it, I found that the problems with hydrogen are not really ones that technology maturity and economies of scale can fix; they are problems of basic physics. Hydrogen is a very light, very low density energy carrier that will always be energy intensive to produce and difficult to store and transport. We can make the process somewhat more efficient than it is now, but it will never truly be efficient, because the you cannot violate the laws of physics.
Storing and retrieving electrical power in lithium ion batteries that are widely available right now is about 85% efficient. The batteries themselves are 99% efficient, the electronics to control the process are about 85%.
Using that same electricity to produce hydrogen, compress and store the hydrogen, and convert it back into electrical power with a fuel cell can never, ever be more than 25% efficient, even with the most advanced and mature technology possible. That is the limit due to the physics, not something we can ever overcome with technology.
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pkuhl 12:12PM (10/22/2007)
Here's the presentation to support Blackbird above.
Even when you get H2 as efficient as Thermodynamics will allow, you are still way better off with batteries. So we should only be making better batteries. Anything else is money wasted and time lost towards real solutions.
http://www.efcf.com/reports/E17.pdf
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