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Gas Powered Fuel Cell Could Help EV Range Anxiety
thecarchik writes "While electric-car advocates may avoid the issue, some buyers simply won't choose a plug-in car that can't travel unlimited distances. That's where the Chevy Volt-style range extender comes in, though the Volt adds unlimited range by burning gasoline in a conventional engine to generate electric power. Now, a new type of fuel cell offers the potential for a different kind of range extender, one that removes the enormous practical problem facing hydrogen fuel cells: the lack of a distribution infrastructure to fuel vehicles that require pure hydrogen to feed their fuel cells. Researchers at the University of Maryland have managed to shrink the size and lower the operating temperature of a solid-oxide fuel cell by a factor of 10, meaning it could conceivably produce as much power as a car engine but occupy less space. The advances come from new materials for the solid electrolyte, as well as design changes, and the researchers feel they have further avenues for improvement left to explore."
You presumably failed to notice the part where the fuel cell is likely to be powered by gasoline?
The problem is that the energy and even automotive manufacturing industry don't want the yoke taken off until the last minute. Why do you think there was such a push for ethanol and hyrdrogen fuel cells? Both of those still need you to fill up at a pump. Electric cars would be able to use a wide variety of energy sources as long as the end result was electric potential. This breaks your dependency on the industry for fuel, which they don't want.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
At first glance, the summary fails to say how this development (which appears to make demand more likely) manages to ease the problems on the supply-side of the hydrogen fuel cell option. What it didn't include is the information that a solid oxide fuel cell can conceivably burn any hydrocarbon fuel stock. TFA mentions gasoline, diesel, natural gas and propane. The idea is that a fuel cell extracts more energy from hydrocarbon fuels than the pitiful 25% claimed for ICE technology. What isn't stated is whether this new fuel cell can handle any of the hydrocarbon fuels without any hardware changes. e.g. pipe in propane or natural gas or supply liquid diesel or gasoline for either gas or liquid based fuelling.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
They say the most Harley owners 'detune' their new bikes just to get the right sound out of the muffler. With the way that things might be going, I wonder if some won't miss their cars making engine sounds, not to mention blind people.
Most noise from a car comes not from the engine, but from the tires (unless you have specifically modified your vehicle to be loud, which is often illegal).
Road noise is the main contributor to the overall loudness of a vehicle.
Actually its likely that for safety reasons the car manufacturers will all start adding sound effects to the vehicles.
Most noise from a car comes not from the engine, but from the tires
Someone hasnt been around electric vehicles much. Theyre everywhere in shanghai, and they are substantially quieter than non-electrics (nearly silent).
This is (generally) true - at highway speeds, the vast majority of the sound is either aerodynamic or from the tires impacting the road. Even at 25mph/50kmph, you'll get more than enough sound from that to warn pedestrians.
The problem is at parking lot speeds. You don't get much noise at all just moving at 5mph/10kmph. Even with a gas engine, it's mostly the acceleration that provides the noise, the engine revving up, not the engine just running.
Since the main time pedestrians and cars are maneuvering near each other and have significant risk of collision is in precisely those situations, I think the "electric engines don't make enough noise" problem could actually be a legitimate problem. By no means a showstopper or a product-killer - after all, a car is usually a pretty large object, and I for one tend to notice large objects in motion. The solution could be just a simple "noise generator used when moving below X speed" - that would handle the pedestrian problem, without increasing noise in areas where noise is an issue and pedestrians are not.
There's a common misconception that because an EV puts out no emissions, that it's 100% clean. And that because electric motors are 80%-90% efficient, EVs are 80%-90% efficient.
About 2/3rds of electricity is generated from fossil fuels, burned in power stations operating at about 40% efficiency. So if you can get the efficiency of this gizmo high enough, you could actually exceed the overall efficiency of plug-in EVs. The transition point would be at about 75% efficiency by my back of the envelope calcs. Of course then the question becomes, why not put these in the power plants. (If you're anti-nuclear, about 2/3rds of that remaining 1/3rd comes from nuclear. Only about 1/9th of our electricity comes from renewables. So that transition point shifts down to about 50% efficiency.)
If your fuel source is predominantly biofuel, then that transition point drops even further.
Are they going to eliminate mufflers as well?
Because last time I checked, on most new cars you can't really hear a gasoline engine either unless it is actively being revved up.
The sound of tires on the road is *FAR* louder than the engine, in general... unless the car's muffler is bad, or unless the car is simply very old.
Should people on electric wheelchairs also install noisemakers to alert blind people of their approach? (some of them are capable of quite a clip, and can do serious damage to someone when it is moving at full speed).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Temperature is actually more important than the energy density in this case. At 650C never mind 900C, you'll still have a lot of trouble with heat--material have an unfortunate tendency to expand and warp (or, worse, snap) at that kind of temperature. Thus, you may be able to turn your car on and off only dozens of times before the SOFC breaks down. This is the real reason why SOFC has never been seriously considered for cars--SOFC has always been relatively compact for the amount of energy they produce (except for the apparatus you'd need to get rid of the huge amounts of heat).
Now, 650C is easy, at least if you are using natural gas as feedstock. (Gasoline may be somewhat more difficult, but not impossible.) Other solid oxide fuel cells that are trying to enter the market operate at or near that temperature range. 350C, though--wow. That will be remarkable, and may indeed be able to brings in an era of fuel cell vehicles, but it'll involve whole new set of chemistry, and I won't believe it until I see it.
You don't need new batteries, just rename it duravolt and do a superbowl commercial with Madonna riding the E-street band's EV.
It turns it into a MORE efficient gasoline-powered vehicle when you're on a long trip. The fuel cell is better than a portable heat engine at burning fuel into electric power. (Perhaps even more efficient at converting fuel into shaft HP after converting the electricity, vs. going straight from an engine through a transmission). And you still have all the braking-scavenging advantages of a hybrid.
It's still an EVEN MORE efficient whatever-the-grid-is-using-powered vehicle when the trip is short enough to be powered entirely by the battery charge. (Even if the grid is driven by fossil fuels, big stationary plants are enough better than little portable engines to more than make up for the grid transmission and battery-charging-and-discharging losses.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This is basically how they think the Bloombox fuel cells shown on 60 minutes last year works. Bloom is how start-up in Silicon Valley with prototypes powering several buildings there. Except the Science article says their technology is five times more space-efficient. A 5' by 5" plate could generate 50W to 100W for a portable computer. 10 of these plates could run a military backpack or appliance. 100 could power a car or house. 500 an office building.
Already done (I think it's US Federal Law). Our Leaf thankfully has a switch to turn off the "chime...chime...chime" that I'm sure our neighbors would otherwise never tire of hearing every time we back out of the garage. There's also supposed to be a noise (switchable as well) emitted moving forward below 19mph, though I can't hear it from inside the car.
I switch off the noisy merry-making when I think about it, and I haven't mowed down any pedestrians yet. I can't tell if it makes any difference in ped behavior because in Seattle they step off the sidewalk without looking whether I'm in the Leaf or an ICE-powered car.
Woo, ringtones for your car, that'll be awesome...
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
They say the most Harley owners 'detune' their new bikes just to get the right sound out of the muffler.
Harley engines get the "right" sound out of the muffler because of their unique firing pattern.
The cyclinders do not fire every 180 degrees, instead they fire every 315 and 405 degrees of crankshaft turn.
It's funny how we have electric cars today, but all the technology that'll make them a true replacement for ICE is 5~20 years away.
And internal combustion hasn't really been pushed to its maximum efficiency yet, so who knows how long it'll actually take.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Giving up its gasoline addiction by designing electric cars that need - gasoline.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I guess it depends on how efficient the fuel cell is. The last link in the summary says "internal combustion engines only transform a quarter of the energy content of gasoline into torque to a car's wheels. The new design could, theoretically, double that figure." So, theoretically, very theoretically, this new fuel cell design could enable a vehicle like the Chevy Volt to go twice as far on a gallon of gasoline as one using an ICE. Maybe more, since because it wouldn't need as large a gas tank and the fuel cell would be smaller than an ICE and generator, it would weigh less. And, since it wouldn't have as many moving parts it could potential have lower maintenance costs and a higher reliability.
While I agree entirely on your point #1, as a cyclist, I find myself taking some offense to your point #2. It is not the high speed traffic that is desirable, it is the efficiency of the road itself. Side roads, in general, do not typically go for more than a few blocks, and in my own experience are usually unsuitable for commuter use even for bicycles for all but near the departure and destination points.
FWIW, I usually cycle quite close to the curb, so I am easily and safely passed by other vehicles. I only move fully into the lane if I am intending to turn left.
Oh... and I *never* wear spandex.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
And apparently you failed to notice that the gasoline cell is only an emergency backup.
I've rented a Volt twice now when traveling, and never had a problem finding a charging station. They're in mall lots, gas stations, next to Walgreens, and in lots of places you would never expect. For someone who lives in an urban or suburban setting, you could go for the life of the car without having to use a drop of gasoline. Plus, they are really nice cars. You get in and you realize how far Chevy has come. I can remember driving a piece of shit Citation back in the 90s and my dad had a Lumina, and they weren't nearly as nice as similarly priced Japanese cars. The Volt is awfully nice in a way that American cars have seldom been.
I'm not ready to buy a Volt because they're still way too expensive. Sort of like the first nice tablets or the first generations of SSD drives or a certain big-name desktop computer with dual Xeon processors. But now you can build dual-Xeon box with a pair of good size SSD drives for less than half the price of those first aluminum-boxed shiny "Pro" desktop computers. And there are capacitive-touch tablets coming out of China with the HD video out and SD slots and Ice Cream Sandwich and all that stuff for about 1/4 the price of those first fancy-pants tablets without SD slots.
It's just a matter of time. The end of fossil fuel dominance is coming, whether or not you like it and whether or not the guy who talks on AM radio says it will never happen. Those oil fields are not refilling themselves and there are more and more smart people thinking in terms of technologies for transportation that do not involve the 200 year-old internal combustion engine. Your squeezing your butt cheeks together is not going to stop progress.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is not the first time it has been proposed either.
The sound of tires on the road is *FAR* louder than the engine, in general... unless the car's muffler is bad, or unless the car is simply very old.
WTF type of giant knobby off-road truck tires do you put on your effing honda civic anyway? This statement is hyperbolic to say the least.
the article is entirely missing the point. range extension doesn't help if the vehicle into which the range extension is placed is massively inefficient. that means that you need to fix the problems associated with standard vehicle designs (box and wedge shapes) in order to get the aerodynamics losses cut by at least 50%, and you need to cut the weight by over 70% (1.5 to 2.0 tonnes down to 350kg) in order to be able to take advantage of hard compound "ECO" tyres, which would otherwise rapidly wear out on a "standard" car. once the aerodynamics are efficient and the weight is low, "range extension" actually provides enough power to run the vehicle pretty much directly. see http://lkcl.net/ev for details.
To a certain extent I agree with you, but you forget a few relevant points. They are working to make internal combustion cars much quieter, mostly for the comfort of the users. I have encountered a few cars (non-electric gas suckers) that when at those "parking lot speeds", the tires make more noise than the engine, and that's not even on gravel. Of course, the background noise of the city is primarily what is masking it. Of course, if you damp down the city noise by silencing so many motors, how much easier would it be to hear the tires?
By the way, in this city, the crosswalks have noise makers for blind or visually impaired people, and you aren't allowed to cross against the light, even if you can't see it. So I guess the biggest threat from a totally silent car would be if they didn't watch where they were going when a blind person tried to cross the street illegally against the light.
Honestly, I'm not saying it isn't something to be considered, but it is in no way a reason to cease developing quieter cars or slap giant noise pollution generators on them.
If they're like the University students around here, they'll step out into moving traffic without looking even if you were driving an F-111 with afterburners on full blast.
ICE can't be pushed anymore without using higher quality fuels. Tell me how much it'll cost to fill your car with methanol. You will be able in increase the compression ratio and add a turbo charger as well to increase the efficiency of your ICE. Its just not practical to use methanol in cars.
My car was designed to use 100 octane petrol that's available in Japan, but in NZ we don't have that. The ECU compensates for this by retarding the timing so it doesn't knock, lowering the efficiency of the engine.
You could switch to diesel and use stupidly high compression ratios and boost pressures. However the higher the boost pressure the larger the turbo, the more the lag. Its always a trade off between efficiency and practicality.
Last I checked, gasoline-powered vehicles don't have an "unlimited" range either. It may be an order of magnitude farther before you have to fill up a gas car than you have to recharge an electric, or somesuch, but that's still far from "unlimited."
Liberty in your lifetime
You've included generation and transport in the EV case, but not with ICE. Factor in the refining and transport of fuel for the ICE and you will have a far differnt story.
You're not comparing apples to apples.
First of all, you're ignoring the amount of energy required to import and refine the gasoline. I've heard estimates as high as 8kWh per gallon for refining. Most of the power plants in the country use coal, which doesn't have an energy intensive refining process.
Secondly, you're ignoring the fact that 40% of electric vehicle owners have solar panels. This negates that pesky coal power plant and its transmission deficiencies.
If you compare the efficiency of the vehicle itself, when you put electricity into an EV, it is 85%+ efficient. If you put gasoline into a car, it is 25% efficient (max). With a gasoline car, no matter what technology comes out, that vehicle will never be more than 25% efficient. With an EV, if you want to have a green car, you can buy solar panels and charge your car that way. Or you can live in an area with wind, solar, geothermal, or nuclear sources (Southern California) and offset pollution that way. Or you can join a program with your electricity provider, and pay a little extra, and get a higher percentage of your electricity from renewable sources.
-Bill
If they could also shrink the cost by a factor of 10 we would have a winner.
It's called "economy of scale".
When they're being built in hundred-thousand lots by automated factories several model years into vehicle production, the design and tooling costs have been largely paid off, and some competitive product is bidding for customers which creates price pressure, they will cost a lot less than the parts in the concept-car prototype or the first model year.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I would rather power my car with American coal, gas, or nukes, than with imported oil. Though LFTRs would be my first choice, if there's a chicken-and-egg problem, I say just pick one and fucking start with vehicular electrification already.
And hey... even at best, installing noisemakers in electric cars just wastes electricity that can be better used to get a person to their destination.
Well, it depends. As long as it uses less power than what's needed to accelerate back to speed after bouncing Grandpa off the hood, it's a net gain, right?
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
The sad thing is, if you have ever spent any significant time in many parts of the world (basically anywhere outside of The US/Canada and Northern/Western Europe), you would realize that American drivers are EASILY (and sadly) among the upper echelons of the world's drivers when it comes to knowledge and safety.
Try driving for a day among the "licensed" drivers of any country in South America, for example, and you will see what I mean.
You never really stop and realize how terrible most drivers are at yielding to others until you almost get hit/run over by one that should have done so for you. Cross-walk signs and lights may as well be invisible in most places for about as often as drivers will stop for them.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
It's funny because he basically pointed out WHY cars from American companies are not like that. People won't pay the price. Funny in an ironic way.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I share your belief that the end of fossil fuel dominance is coming. I also believe that hydrocarbons will be with us for a very long time. We've got military tanks, trucks, ships, jet fighters, bombers, transports, and so on that run on hydrocarbons. All of these have a useful lifespan measured in decades. Many of these military vehicles will have crew that have not even been born yet, for some of them their mothers have not even been born yet. I believe we will see a rise of synthesized fuels to replace our currently available fossil fuels. We are already halfway there with techniques like hydrocarbon cracking commonly in use. The infrastructure is already there, of course, for storage and transport. This is why fuel cells that can run off of gasoline is even being considered with all of their complications.
I recall reading somewhere that the hydrogen density in gasoline is higher than that of pure liquid hydrogen. The storage and transport of liquid hydrogen has its own problems. We already know we can handle gasoline safely. I believe the "hydrogen economy" will look a lot like the current economy. The hydrocarbons will still flow but instead of pumping it out of the ground we will create them in factories powered by nuclear fission and coal. The coal will run out too in time but by then we will have completed the transition to nuclear power.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
This is still significant technology. Solid-oxide fuel cells are on the order of 80%+ efficient. Combined with an electric motor they handily beat any internal combustion engine you might fit in a car. They have less moving parts, they're basically silent to operate. It's all the benefits of hydrocarbon fuel without the downsides (sans CO2, but even that uses less).
Since we're also talking a purely electrical connection, it means we can also think about modularizing the powertrain - i.e. power source and motive force can be effectively isolated, and the power source interchanged. For a move away from fossil fuels that's huge - if people can own vehicles which mean they can switch between short-haul batteries and long-haul hydrocarbon, that's almost a solved problem - since once the economics of batteries become favorable, market-forces will end up with people using them most of the time.
Not to mention, it would mean biofuels go back on the table - the power source of choice for long-haul travel, if short-haul only needs batteries.
1) No man looks good in spandex. Maybe gay men think so, but I'm not a gay man and I really don't want to see this shit. If the cyclist is not a gay man, perhaps they don't want this kind of attention.
I shall assume that you are male. Let me tell you that my last couple of girlfriends would strongly disagree with your opinion, and I'm much more interested in their opinion than yours... :)
This is still significant technology.
I made no claim otherwise. I'm just recognizing that even if (or when) we run out of dead dinosaurs to burn we will still have hydrocarbons powering our economy.
"Significant" is one thing, "practical" is another. This technology is still going to have to compete with internal combustion engines for power output, longevity, cost, weight, safety, and so on. I believe we are still a long way from fuel cell powered cars.
Not to mention, it would mean biofuels go back on the table - the power source of choice for long-haul travel, if short-haul only needs batteries.
Not so fast. If these things can burn gasoline, fuel oil, propane, etc. then they can probably burn ethanol too. It will take legislation to change for the corn to end up on kitchen tables instead of fuel tanks. Ethanol has been a disaster on many levels. Burning food for fuel is how civilizations have fallen, we don't need to repeat history. The legislation will change just not because of fuel cells. It will change because people have become cold and hungry.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The trouble is lack of enforcement. For some reasons all our police forces seem to want to do is park someplace point a radar gun at passing traffic to catch speeders. I don't have any evidence to back this up but I find it almost impossible to accept that pestering people doing 10mpg over the posted speed on highways and major thoroughfares offers as much in the way of safety gains as stricter observation and enforcement of other traffic laws would.
I see people do the following all the time, and the police doing nothing:
1. Failing to yield to pedestrians at a cross walk.
2. Failing to yield to their right at four way stop, where there is a backup or both arrived at the same time.
3. Failing to treat an out traffic signal as four way stop.
4. Backing up after entering an intersection to make a left and the light changed, if you entered legally under green you are to exit forward ALWAYS
5. Failing to yield to lefting drivers who entered on green after the light has changed
6. Evading traffic control devices, cutting the parking lots to avoid lights etc,
7. Doing rights on red, where it has been prohibited by a sign.
8. Making a right on red from the left lane
9. Failing to honk when passing stopped traffic, mail truck etc
10. Failing to stop for school buses
--
These are unfortunately no longer illegal in most places but are bad form and IMHO should be:
11. Passing on the right when using a divided highway
12. Cursing in the left lane on a divided highway.
If law enforcement would grab people for doing these atrocious violations instead of fussing over speeders we would all be way better off.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Chicago, IL.
You may have passed one and not even known it. They're not much bigger than the little kiosk that you use to put air in your tires at the gas station. Maybe you're looking for something the size of a gas station.
For example, the closest one to my house is the one in the parking lot of the drug store. I never noticed it until I rented the Volt and googled "ev charging stations" and then actually looked for it. Don't expect a big sign like at the Shell Station. There are 7 within a three mile radius of where I live and 3 months ago I would have said the same thing as you, "I have never seen a single charging station" even though they've all been there all that time.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The US Military is the sector of our society that is moving to renewable energy the fastest. They see the writing on the energy wall regarding fossil fuels.
Of course, like with most things, the military is doing it in the most expensive way possible ($400/gal biodiesel jet fuel!) but like with most things, those technologies are going to eventually migrate to the civilian economy.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I live North West of Boston. The closest charge station to where I live is the next town over. There are none listed in Maine, none listed near where I work in Framingham, and none listed in the Nashua, NH area. Plus, there are none in Atlantic Canada (where I am originally from), maybe due to the cold winters.
For a clickable map, see here: http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/fuels/electricity_locations.html
Until electric vehicles can be recharged quickly, either through a fuel cell or a large capacitor, they will not be an option for my next purchase. I do enough long range driving for them to be impractical.
Hydrocarbon chains are an excellent way to store energy - gasoline, diesel, propane, ethanol, butanol, etc. If you look at energy density from either a volumetric or mass basis, they're hard to beat. Super capacitors are nowhere near as energy dense, and Mr. Fusion is still only a Hollywood pipe dream.
Where you get your feedstock for the hydrocarbons and how you use them is the real trick. If you're intent on using fossil crude as a basis, you're going to be releasing lots of locked-up material into the environment. If you're intent on being inefficient with the hydrocarbon fuel, well, that's just lazy/stupid/cheap-bastard.
Fossil crude is still pretty damned cheap as a feedstock, which is why it still dominates the fuel supply chain. If it were more expensive, or harder to obtain, or non-existent anymore, you can bet the oil companies would be all over the bio-whatever forms of their current product offerings. You want to be environmentally sensitive? Be efficient in how you use energy, from the fuel in your car's tank to the wood you burn in your fireplace. We'd be in a much better situation if people weren't so damned wasteful. (Note - efficient behavior is seldom the least expensive option.)