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Chrysler Announces Hydrogen Fuel Cell Van
Juanfe writes: "Chrysler group announced a concept vehicle called the Natrium, powered by a sodium borohydride (NaBH4) engine developed by Millenium Cell. NaBH4 can be made from sodium borate -- basic borax, used in laundry detergent.
MilleniumCell is a US Company that, not surprisingly, has made strategic agreements with major borax purveyors in the US (which just happens to be thought of as the largest borax reserve in the world). Could this be the start of the end of big oil and the start of the start of big Borax?" superflippy points out that Chrysler's press release is related to the Electric Vehicle Association of the Americas (EVAA) Electric Transportation Industry Conference 2001.
Hardly...
The U.S. auto industry and the U.S. oil industry are so tight that work has been slowed or delayed for decades on all-electric cars.
While this fuel-cell uses borax derivatives, I would be willing to bet money that any production fuel-cell based vehicles deployed in the U.S. use hydrocarbon-based cells. They're not going to let you just stop filling up every week, after all.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
There's an article from '97 describing Chrystler's idea for the hydrogen cell fuel car. Interesting to compare their predictions and the result four years later. Quite thought-provoking.
What do you think of MusicCity now?
Not that I expect them to take on the Dubya's oil folks, but Yahoo's Market Guide has some interesting background on the company, Millennium Cell.
The article states that the process of charging up the borax produces pollution, though so does this not (for now) just represent the "make the pollution elsewhere" paradox of electric cars, whereby one uses coal-generated electricity to drive around instead of gasoline, substituting one fossil fuel's energy for another?
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
Being the clever industry they are, the oil companies LONG ago realized they were dependent on a limited resource. Indeed, the reserves wouldnt make it out of the 21st century.
Hence they all now refer to themselves as 'energy companies', and work with all sorts of things, not just oil.
Its in their best interests that things start moving off fossil fuels, given their limited supply, and people move onto things like hydrogen, which is pretty damn common. And they know this.
You'll still be getting your fuel from them in 20 years...it just might not be gasoline anymore.
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Millenium makes the system that turns the sodium borohydride into hydrogen, then Ballard's fuel cell turns the hydrogen into electricity.
I want one.
Yes Clean energy, really really clean energy. How clean you say? Its so clean you can used the old batteries to wash your soccer uniforms!
Yes I know, its not very punny.
"Get them before they get....
So does this mean you need a huge water tank? I saw no mention of this in the article - but I would guess you'd need more water than you need petrol in current cars.
Have I seen gas prices in the United States lately? Hell no. I'm nowhere near your country, nor am I a citizen of it. I am, however, aware enough of international politics (and your domestic politics) to understand just how connected your President is to the oil industry both domestically and internationally.
Are you trying to suggest that the present depression in US gas pricing provides any evidence for or against the suggestion that US President Bush is involved in the oil business?
To attempt to drag this stuff back on topic and away from Republican American ethnocentrism, let me try this:
I would humbly suggest that this venture will face significant opposition from the traditional energy (nee oil) companies.
You're right tho, facts don't get points unless they're relevant or related to the discussion. Otherwise we could all get our 50 karma by posting mathematics formulae, now couldn't we?
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
The interesting thing about this article is not that they're selling a fuel cell based car, it's that they seem to have come up with a way to actualy power the fuel cell. For years we have been talking about hydrogen powered fuel cells "that's only byproduct is air and water", while ignoring the large amounts of energy needed to extract the most abundant elemet from the universe. Traditional hydrogen generation uses energy that (surprise) comes mostly from fossil fuels. If they've found a way to use borax instead of fossil fuels, I'll be very impressed.
Unless they've altered the laws of physics, it will still take energy to do this "recharging" of borax that the article talks about, but hopefully this can be more effient than todays batteries, and will at least provide an alternative to oil that does not pollute the air.
One of the biggest problems for gaining acceptance of hydrogen as a fuel is containment of the hydrogen. Hydrogen gas will diffuse out of any container you put it in. So if you have a tank of hydrogen sitting around for a while (how long depends on the material), you will end up with an empty tank.
What makes this solution elegant is that they hydrogen is chemically locked up. As long as the NaBH4 is long lived, then you don't have to worry about it.
Also, the NaBH4 is only refined into hydrogen and borax when hydrogen is needed, so the amount of hydrogen around is relatively small at any given time.
Incidently, hydrogen is not that flamable. You need a proper combination of hydrogen, oxygen, and heat to set it burning and hydrogen dissipates very quickly. (And don't start talking about hydrogen bombs, you need a fission bomb just to ignite one of those and the hydrogen needs to be the heavier (and less common) isotopes anyway.
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The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
For example, engine output power will now be rated in scores of mule teams.
Here's a couple of links.
. pd f
r id e.html
http://espi-metals.com/msds's/sodiumborohydride
http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/SO/sodium_borohyd
Here's what the article says about Sodium Borohydride...
"To solve those problems, Chrysler's system stores hydrogen in sodium borohydride powder, which is nonflammable and nontoxic"
Here's what the data sheets say...
"Stable, but reacts readily with water (reaction may be violent). Incompatible with water, oxidising agents, carbon dioxide, hydrogen halids, acids, palladium, ruthenium and other metal salts, glass. Flammable solid. Air-sensitive."
"Toxic by ingestion. Risk of serious internal burns if ingested. Harmful if inhaled and in contact with skin. May cause burns or severe irritation in contact with skin or eyes.
Toxicity data
(The meaning of any abbreviations which appear in this section is given here.)
ORL-RAT LD50 89 mg kg-1
SKN-RBT LD50 4000 mg kg-1
IPR-RAT LD50 18 mg kg-1
Risk phrases
(The meaning of any risk phrases which appear in this section is given here.)
R15 R25 R34."
Looks to me like big business is full of shit yet again.
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Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
The U.S. auto industry and the U.S. oil industry are so tight that work has been slowed or delayed for decades on all-electric cars.
This makes a good story for movies in need of a bad buy but I've not seen any reason to believe it. As a matter of fact, no one in the industry (except the water injected carburator guy thats been in urban lore since the 40's), has ever accused big oil of maligning or hedging their work.
Its time to get out of fantasy land and into real life. Theres to many problems that need solving to get worked up over movie plots.
While this fuel-cell uses borax derivatives, I would be willing to bet money that any production fuel-cell based vehicles deployed in the U.S. use hydrocarbon-based cells
Its possible that this is a notion of the past. However, hydrocarbon fuel cells are non-puluting to California standards. So, I have no problem with it. After all, the energy has to come from somewhere no matter what transport agent is used.
Humm, I had no idea we were viewed this way by the rest of the world. . .
"Hi, I'm from the United States."
"Oh, yes, big land of Borax!"
"Well, um, sure, I guess. . ."
The usual issues apply: finding a source for hydrogen, keeping the storage system and fuel cell from crudding up, and getting the system weight and cost down to manageable levels.
It's still at the "concept car" stage.
There are a few ways in which electric cars reduce polution:
1) They generaly don't use any power when they are at idle. So when you are stiting in trafic at least you are not using power.
2) A large Gas-Turbine plant (Running what is basicly a Jet engine) can be more efficant that a Otto engine in a car. For one thing it does not have to go anywhere, and probably gets better maintinace.
And ofcourse it moves the polution to somewhere else. But it would be good if we used less Coal.
On the other had air polution has gone way down over the last 100 years. In 1905 or so My Great grandfather left London where he had go to from Russia because of all the polution from everyone burning coal for heat and cooking.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
We were leaning towards Toyota's Prius, although Honda makes one too (the Insight, I believe). Can't speak for Honda, but Toyota is very serious about this, selling them cheap at about $25K (and you get to deduct $2000 on your Federal income taxes. Some states give you incentives, too). Obviously, they're hoping to make it up on market share (not like the dot-coms, I hope!) and maintenance. We test drove one and it was nice, with the pickup of a small V6, but it was uncanilly quiet -- your brain thinks you're coasting even when you're cruising or accelerating slightly. AT 50+ MPG and the tax deductions, we were hoping to come out ahead instead of maintaining our '94 Corolla.
...until our company laid my wife off. Damn recession. Still, the Prius is a pretty cool car. ;)
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
One of the biggest problems for gaining acceptance of hydrogen as a fuel is containment of the hydrogen. Hydrogen gas will diffuse out of any container you put it in. So if you have a tank of hydrogen sitting around for a while (how long depends on the material), you will end up with an empty tank.
You're smoking crack here dhovis.
Containment is one of the biggest problems with hydrogen fuel cells, but it is not because of the hydrogen diffusivity through metals (yes it does, but very slowly...not a big deal), but rather the handling properties of combustible gases as opposed to liquid fuels.
The energy density of a liquid hydrocarbon (based on heat of combustion) is about 100,000 Btu/gallon. For hydrogen it is a little less than 40 Btu/gallon at 1 atmosphere pressure and room temperature. So you need to compress the hell out of it to get a sufficiently high energy density.
That is the containment problem people don't like. Nobody will care if a year passes and you have lost 1% of your hydrogen.
-Rothfuss
I don't see anything you've cited that indicates that the stuff is likely to blow up in a wreck. Gasoline is toxic, too, especially here in California where the air-quality geniuses have demanded that it include the carcinogenic MTBE.
I'd also point out that you don't often encounter palladium, ruthenium and other metal salts on your daily commute.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Ok, most everything before this is quite correct, but it drives me crazy when people say this. You can't put a nuclear power plant in a car. Nor tidal power, nor hydro power, nor solar chimneys, nor any other type of clean, non-fossil-fuel source of power. But you can put them on the power grid and then run your car off it, so all of this is quite worthwhile.
Dyolf Knip
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What fuel cells do for you is provide a better way to store energy. The energy still has to come from somewhere.
Unlike some other conspiracies, the automobile/oil industry ones have some interesting history. I'd say it's more like interesting food for though, and it's not from some paranoid kook either --I'm not one to believe in paranoid conspiracies, new age cures, faith healing, visits from intelligent extra-terrestrials, mysticism, etcetera. I do however believe in sunshine (anti-backroom) laws, fair competition (through iron handed regulation if necessary, and good public policy.
Michael Parenti in Democracy for the Few (6th Ed.)[1] writes about some disturbing observations. The energy frugality of mass-transit was so "undesirable" to the oil and auto industries" that "[f]or over a half-century their response has been to undermine th nation's rail and electric-bus system."
The undermining of Los Angeles's 1935 "75-mile radius" "3,000 quiet, pollution-free electric trains [carrying"80 million people a year" was carried out by:
He follows up with the influence of cars, extended references of death rates --"2x accumulated number of Americans killed in all the wars ever fought by the United States"", urban air pollution, massive automobile land use, "$300 billion annual subsid[ies]", while "...mass transit--the most efficient, cleanest, and safest form of transporting goods and people" is abandoned. (p. 106)
I believe the money used "to subsidize automobile use" can be viewed, from one perspective, as an example of an economic freeloader. As auto companies undermine mass transit, thus using public dollars (which they only pay a fraction of) to fund expensive automobile public infrastructure.
I particularly like how he states that "[g]iven the absence of alternative mods of transportatoin, people become dependent on the automobile as a way of life so that their need for cars is often as real as their need for jobs." The economic burden of autos is pretty high for most americans. It's not like a $1000 tv, or $300 bike. It's a monthy loan payment, and then it's a bi-annual insurance payment, and finally its massive social/tax/healthcare cost from the "46,000 people killed" and "2,000,000 people injured" in traffic accidents. It makes wonder if the Segway could make a dent into this automobile entity we all have to live with?[24][25]
_____ >Parenti's footnotes<
23. Jonathan Kwitny, "The Great Transportation Conspiracy,"in Cargan and Ballantin (eds.), Sociological Footprints, 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1982)
24. Bureau of Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States 1992 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1992); Andrew Kimbrell, "Car Culture: Driving Ourselves Crazy,"Washington Post September 3, 1989. Kimbrell notes that fatality statistics may be too low since they do not include deaths that occur several days after accidents or off-road.[2] he points out that motor vehicles kill easily one million animals each day, making road kills second only to the meat industry. More deer are killed by cars than by hunters.[3]
25. Kimbrell, "Car Culture" >/Parenti's footnotes<
_____
1. "a major voice among political progressives"...Ph.D from Yale...lectures frequently at college campuses across the country." --[from back cover]
2. My grandfather died because of accident related complications =(
3. Animal rights activists will have a hard time stopping consumers from driving though, considering how car ownership is ingrained. And/or how convenient it is.