Not as beautiful as it seemed

Since the creation of this blog we have presented a lot of pros for you to support fuell cells and I think it's time to present some cons about them:

Firstly, this was previously mentioned but being such a new technology means they are still expensive, and more needs to happen in their commercial development before costs can become really competitive because price would have to fall by a factor of 10 for fuel cells to become economically viable (http://www.columbia.edu/~ajs120/hydrogen/web-pages/h-fuel-cell-disadv.html  .Although this high price can be because the little experience and research on this sector just as the first computers or mobile phones.

In addition, hydrogen needs to be made. We can't just get hydrogen from the ground like oil, gas, or coal. We need to use energy to make the hydrogen. Because of this hydrogen is NOT an energy source, but an energy store. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081211191617AAFOqnG

Moreover, hydrogen has much less volumetric energy density than oil or  diesel and this makes storage more difficult. Nowadays, development has made posible to increment its energy denstiy by storing hydrogen at 200-350 bar. However, its energy density is still nearly ten times less than oil's. Other storage methods can be used such as luiquid hydrogen wich requires high energy is needed to mantain it in adecuate temperature (-250ºC) or metal hidride storing, wich is very expensive and pretucs are very heavy and have a svery slow recharge. But as storage systems are more complicated than this we prefer to dedicate a whole entry to them.  http://www.fuelcell.no/hydrogen_storage_es.htm 

Finally, new lithium batteries are leaving fuel cell behind as they are cheaper, easier to store, and the car industry is already using them far more.For example, emerging thin-film lithium polymer batteries created in labs by Solidcore, Cymbet, NASA Glenn Research Center, Voltaflex, ITN, and others have energy densities up to 900 Wh/L and high-pressure hydrogen gas has an energy volume-density of about 400 watt-hours per liter. http://peakenergy.blogspot.com.es/2005/01/batteries-vs-fuel-cells.html

Another step forward

Scientists never rest, and thanks to that we don't stop moving forward in our race against our more and more limited resources. I believe fuel cells are the energy of the future, due to its cleanness, reliability and efficiency. Yet, we could say that we are not ready for them yet, as for them to be fully operative they require a lot little details to be implanted, such as house-size Hydrogen tanks, recharging stations and such.

Scientists in London, however, are bringing the future to us by making the production of fuel cells cheaper and more efficient -see link http://www.theengineer.co.uk/sectors/automotive/news/scientists-develop-new-method-of-making-hydrogen-fuel-cells/1011947.article#ixzz1oXAqpKqE-, which will I'm sure encourage companies and countries in the world consider this option in the near future when oil suffers another strike, or simply threatens to disappear.

I specially like the way they have improved the existing fuel cells, because I consider it a very clever idea, and a good one, as it has also helped surpass a handicap they had, which was the series formation that led to an overall fail every time one of them failed.

Also, it brings the hope of near innovations, which is always good news. I am personally looking forward to hearing from them, as I'm sure it will only mean that we are nearer from getting free from toxic batteries and pollution caused by oil engines.

Stuart Island

Stuart Island is in the San Juans, Washington, and is about 2 miles long. 

An experimental program is going on in this island, for the Stuart Island Energy Initiative has built a complete system where solar panels generates the power to put working some electrolyzers, which produces hydrogen. This hydrogen is stored on a tank of 1900 litres, in a pression of 10 and 80 bar. This fuel is used finally in a fuel cell of 48 V, and it gives enough electric energy for all the living in the whole island. 

This project started in 2004 Fuel Cell Conference in Denver, and it took 2 years to be ready. That's mainly because of the difficulty of arriving to this island, which hasn't got any ship or ferry service. 

The idea of this program is to develop a clean and pollution-free energy system expecting to get to a world wide energy infrastructure. It is known that fuel cells only exhales water vapor, but still the main problem is in the way of getting the hydrogen, because the way we have today isn't carbon-neutral. A clean way isn't supposed to be achieved in few years.

Another advantage of using hydrogen is that it stores a lot of energy per kilogram, because of its small weight. However, the energy released in the combustion of hydrogen by the reaction is 242 kJ/mole, and it is less that the energy taken from natural gas (800 kJ/mole). We also must say that 242 kJ of hydrogen occupies the same volume as 800 kJ of natural gas. However, gasoline is the master of energy. Did you know that gasoline is more energy-dense than dynamite? This is thanks to its density - a mole of gasoline releases 5500 kJ, and in 22.4 liters (the volume of 242 kJ of hydrogen) there are 160 moles of gasoline, containing 900.000 kJ of energy.

The fact is that people choose fuel cells over batteries because they find it cheaper and more reliable for large-scale energy storage. And as this island shows, "a hydrogen system is practical and appropriate, here and now!

If you have any cuestions about this special island, I give you the e-mails of the three man who put working this proyect:

Stephen Friend at apathseeker@hotmail.com

Jason Lerner at wapalco@gmail.com

Charles Delahunt at cdelahunt@siei.org

Source: http://siei.org

Market future of fuel cell cars

 Hello everybody, today we're publishing what we think is an important step forward in the world of fuel cell and is that Mercedes Benz has finally announced their new B-class fuel cell car as you can see in the official website http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/benz/green. It's characteristics equivalent to a standar family car with a range of up to 240 miles, the equivalent of nearly 90 highway mpg, and only water vapor as its emissions. However is still not competitive with the other cars, the ones with internal combustion engine, because of its price. Although responsibles say that te price is not specified yet  the speculated price in TV programs such as Top Gear  is very high and people who can afford such a price for a car prefer a more powerful gasoline car. But the B-class won´t be at market officialy until 2014 ans as Dieter Zetsche, chairman of the board of management of Daimler and head of Mercedes-Benz Cars, has said in  (http://www.insideline.com/mercedes-benz/mercedes-benz-fuel-cell-car-ready-for-market-in-2014.html), they want to make prices more competitive so we don't loose our hope. In the video below appears the previously mentioned Dieter Zetsche presenting the car in the Detroit auto show.

This is an important bet for the future of fuel cell in market and, as we support this energy source, best luck and wishes to Mercedes-Benz in the development of this car. 

Delivery sistems

Hydrogen and fuel cells have the potential to solve the major energy security and environmental challenges that face decendence on petroleum imports, poor air quality and gas emissions. But the overall challenge to hydrogen production is cost reduction.

 In order to succeed in the commercial marketplace, hydrogen must be comparable to conventional fuels and technologies on a cost-competitive transportation. A hydrogen economy requires an infraestructure to deliver hydrogen from where it's produced to the point of end-use. It includes a stationary power site, compressors, trucks and dispensers for delivering fuel.

Becouse of that, the U.S. Deparment of Energy supports a research with 7 million dolars to develop a wide range of technologies, to allow an economically and environmentally friendly production of hydrogen. The money will be given to four projects in California, Washington and Oregon to advanced hydrogen storage technologies, in order to help domestic automakers bring more fuel cell electric vehicles into the mainstream market. They attend to increase the performance of hydrogen storage by developing innovative materials, as well as advanced tanks for efficcient and safe transportation, in a three-year project that will help lower the cost of this energy source.
The technologies used for storing hydrogen vehicles will also affect the design and selection of a hydrogen delivery system and infraestructure. The system must avoid any unnecessary energy-intensive stage to maximize the overall energy efficiency. We have to consider three potential delivery paths:

1. Gaseous hydrogen delivery
2. Liquid hydrogen delivery
3. Novel solid or liquid hydrogen carriers 

 The liquid and gas paths transport pure hydrogen in its molecular form (H) via truck, pipeline, rail or barge, and those are primary methods for deliveryng industrial hydrogen today. The carrier pathway uses materials that transport hydrogen in another form than free H_2 molecules, such as liquid hydrocarbons, metal hybrides, chemical hybrides or ther hydrogen-rich compounds. Here are an explaining figure:

Gaseous Delivery Pathway

Liquid Hydrogen Delivery Pathway

Hydrogen Carrier Delivery Pathway

Source: www.wikipedia.com ,
 http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/production/

Hydrogen for smartphones

Apple has once more demonstrated their foresight and worry for the actual problems of their users. Nowadays nearly everyone has a smarphone, and therefore everyone knows that they barely last for a day or two. Seeing to it, Apple has designed a set of Hydrogen fuelled batteries that can go on for weeks, being the only drawback  the fact that they are disposable.

Some may think that that's not a drawback, but I am myself skeptical about the price those batteries will have, because they may be a perfect solution or a viable option depending on the case, or even a complete disaster. There is much to be known, like the posible implementation with current devices, or whether they'll be exclusive  to the new Apple models, being that the most likely option.

Anyway, it is not to be denied the fact that it is a very important step forward in the world of batteries, and maybe an end to the lithium batteries.

I leave you the link I've found, but I expect to find some with more information in later days. Keep posted!

Link: http://gadgetsteria.com/2012/01/17/apple-to-introduce-hydrogen-fuel-cells-in-future-products/

The near future

Although fuel cells are a newborn energy source, as you can see in the video, it is likely to be an important source in a near future. Nowadays fuel cells cannot compete with the internal combustion engine but the rising prices of oil and pollution make this clean energy an important source to consider.

Different countries have started to introduce fuel cell stations and the're doing really well. The first station was built in Reikjavik, Iceland in 2003 but since then other countries have implemented these refueling stations into their services. The leader country in this sector is The US with an important amount of 85 refueling stations allover the country. Japan, Canada, Norway or Sweeden would be other countries who bet for this kind of clean energy.

However, as you can see in the video or in most of websites is that this energy source has only succeed on being comercial for public transport as more than 100 fuel cell propulsed buses are circulating around the world, because although many different type of vehicles have been developped in order to work with hydrogen cells they still being too expensive or not efficient enough but we will write about it in further entries. But I previously mentioned this is a newborn energy and research is needed to improve it and in this blog we will follow that research objectively in spite of the controversy about de real power behind fuel cells.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell

Gorka