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Fuel-Cell Car Racing Series Aims To Spur Green Motoring
Anonymous Cow writes "The world's first international fuel-cell powered motor racing series kicked off in Rotterdam over the weekend. The organisers hope that 'Formula Zero,' like Formula 1, can become a forum for competing technology as much as anything else, helping green consumer cars to become better."
Most commercially viable fuel cells contain a first stage catalyst which break down a hydro-carbon fuel (petrol or similar) to produce hydrogen and CO2. Obviously for racing, the extra weight of the first stage is avoided by loading up on pre-prepared hydrogen.
The difference in emissions is from the efficiency of the whole system - somewhere under 35% for a conventional IC engine drivetrain, and around 85% upwards for a hydrocarbon/fuel cell drivetrain. Meaning far more than twice the power delivered carbon emissions created.
Longer term, it is easy to replace the first stage with out-of-car hydrogen generation, if and when clean hydrogen becomes cheap and easy to transport. The second stage (the actual fuel cell) remains unchanged.
As with all technologies, it is an incremental process. However, a >50% cut in emissions is a breakthrough - once cells become viable, stable and maintenance free for long term use (still a number of years off), they will be everywhere. In the mean time, the electric drivetrain components are already being implemented, and constantly improved, in full electric cars and hybrid electric vehicles.
Is crushing a suspect's child's testicles illegal?
John Yoo: "No, [if] the President thinks he needs to do that."
Fuel cells are not "a good thing". They're an incredibly expensive boondoggle that's been leaching money from electric vehicles. Let's compare and contrast FCVs with BEVs that use modern automotive li-ions (phosphates, stabilized spinels, titanates, etc).
They're roughly a third the efficiency of EVs. Even if you use cleantech to create the hydrogen, you're still talking three times the coastline covered in wind turbines, three times the desert land covered in solar, three times the rivers dammed for hydro, etc -- not good. Even if your electrolysis was near lossless, as a couple techs in the lab are proposing to do, they're still nearly twice as wasteful as EVs. Even hydrogen from natural gas reformation compared to EVs powered by natural gas power plants is *still* significantly more wasteful for fuel cells ((25% efficiency versus 35%).
Hydrogen is expensive; electricity is dirt cheap. Hydrogen is fundamentally always going to be more expensive because it's such a PITA to handle -- leaks through practically anything, embrittles metals, is corrosive, etc -- and not to mention, poses safety and environmental risks.
Safety? Autmotive li-ions can be abused to heck and back without starting a fire -- discharged to 0V, overcharged, punctured, etc; the electrolyte is generally flammable, but no moreso than gasoline. Hydrogen is an incredibly combustible substance -- burns in almost any fuel air mixture, very vigorously, with a very pale blue, hard to see flame; rapidly evolves deflagrations into detonations in atmospheric conditions; pools under overhangs; can be ignited with less than a tenth the ignition energy of gasoline; enters pipes and tubes and follows them to their destinations, pooling there; etc. Liquid hydrogen is even worse; it acts like a high explosive. Check out NASA's safety guidelines for dealing with hydrogen to get an idea of how much of a pain it is to handle.
Fuel cells are ridiculously expensive. Here, go shopping. A good chunk of that price is due to the price of platinum, one of the rarest elements on the planet, although things like Nafion membranes don't help the price, either. Getting fuel cells for $10/W would be an outstanding price. Your average car will need ~10kW to maintain highway speeds, and more for accel/decel, so you're looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Automotive li-ions, except for the titanates, are usually a little over $0.50/Wh in bulk, and are projected to significantly decline with mass production, since they're not raw materials costs limited. A couple tens of kilowatts (a couple hours of driving at highway speeds) means $10-20k currently, and significantly less in the near future. And to top it all off, the batteries last longer, too. Nafion membranes tend to wear out over time in fuel cells, giving them around five years or so in typical FCV usage (some techs are proposed to raise that). And there are other components to break, too -- fuel cells have moving parts (compressors, pumps, etc), support parts (heaters, etc), and so on. Automotive li-ions will generally last for thousands to even tens of thousands (in the case of the titanates) of cycles. We're talking decades. To give an idea of how durable they are, the Volt is going to come with a 10 year warranty on its battery pack, and all of the other upcoming EV/PHEV makers are similarly talking about very long warranties. They should last the life of the car.
As for range, it's roughly a draw. 200-250 miles is a typical range for a FCV that costs hundreds of thous
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