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Japanese Start-up Plans Hydrogen Fuel Cell For 2014
angry tapir writes "A Japanese start-up says it has finessed a technology that could finally make consumer-grade fuel cells a reality. If successful, the company, Aquafairy, would create a business where many much larger companies have failed. Prototypes of the company's hydrogen fuel cell technology are on show this week at the Ceatec exhibition in Japan where the company's president, Mike Aizawa, said he hopes the first products will be on sale next year."
Details aren't mentioned in the article, but there have been a variety of groups demonstrating various powders and matrices that absorb the gaseous hydrogen and release it later (in response to gentle heating, a drop in vapor pressure, etc.), a so-called hydrogen sponge.
A Swedish company already did this, they call it "myFC" and it's powered by a "puck" of hydrogen. Wether it's useful, I have no idea.
http://www.kth.se/en/forskning/pa-djupet/ladda-mobilen-med-vatten-1.381551
http://powertrekk.com/
Most commercial hydrogen is produced by steam reforming natural gas, not electrolysis.
They key to a hydrogen economy (Ugh, buzzword/phrase) isn't the production of hydrogen but its storage. 3000 PSI (20.68Mpa) cylinders aren't appealing to safety advocates or consumers and other forms of storage haven't panned out. Plus the energy needed to compress hydrogen to high pressures begins to make the overall process much less efficient. Without a method to densely store hydrogen safely, effectively and efficiently, liquid fuels (including liquefied gas) will remain the preferred choice.
Imagine developing a combustion engine while you haven't even worked out a process to drill or refine oil for the engine.
You mean like Mr. Diesel did with his engine? It was demoed running on peanut oil in 1901 I think.
Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe. Using the state transition of water/electrolysis to store and release energy means that we have a completely renewable source of hydrogen. 'Using' the fuel simply puts it back into the feedstock state.
Couple that with the fact that more energy hits the earth as sunlight in an 'hour' than we currently use across the entire planet in an entire year and you have all the energy you need to split water into hydrogen.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
A "large" unit that does 200 watts might be useful for trickle charging batteries on a RV to allow for some boondocking when the solar panels don't give enough power to keep the bank charged... but we already have technologies out that give a better energy/volume than what is stated.
Truma, an European RV appliance maker makes a fuel cell that uses propane. It makes up to 250 watts, which may not run an A/C, but it does a good job at keeping the batteries topped off, which is important because RV furnaces require electricity for the vent fans for the heat exchanger.
There is also the EFOY cell that uses methanol that is starting to be used in RVs in the US (Roadtrek E-treks), but it is still quite expensive. If it starts selling for a bit less, it will go a long way to keeping batteries maintained when a rig is stored or when boondocking.
With all the disadvantages of hydrogen (3600 PSI, while a propane tank will vent at 200 PSI), I'd give this a good start, but still needs work before it would have a real niche here in the US.