An evalutation of fuel policy clearly shows trending toward increased performance of gasoline powered vehicles, not in a decrease upon the dependancy of the automobile industry and resulting economies (hence social structures) on the use of oil.
It is generally accepted that automobile manufacturers, on average, increase gasoline fuel efficiency roughly one per cent per year using gasoline as the fuel of choice. This statistic reflects a continuation of feature-sets now expected by customers such as air-conditioning, anti-lock brakes, and an increase in automation and in-cab power usage which drain engine power resources and by that token have an impact on efficiency.
Nat'l Academies Press, Review of the Research Program of the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles: (1998), page 72, in chapter 5 Fuel Strategy
Several key technologies are said to prevent the commercialization of fuel cell technology in transportation. The first, and perhaps the most important development required, is a 'safe' hydrogen storage system. Current designs using up to 5000 psi tanks are considered too dangerous by industry insiders, even a security threat by government regulators, as any explosion could be fatal. Fortunately several properties of hydrogen make the gas less dangerous than gasoline. It takes more concentration of hydrogen than gasoline to ignite, and as a gas hydrogen dissipates into the atmosphere quickly and without toxic effect.
The second hurdle for fuel cells is cold starting. In this, the development of either a system to prevent water from freezing, or a chemical additive to water that does not decrease the electrical efficiency of the chemical reaction need to take place. True, there is heat during this chemical cycle and water is a byproduct of combining oxygen and hydrogen in this process, but the water required to run a fuel cell does not originate from the fuel cell during start-up. It has to come from an external source because it is on a different side of the electrolyte.
The startup water is used to make the 8 micron Nafion (TM) membrane between cells wet as an aid to protons from the hydrogen to pass through to the cathode side of the cell.
It is this polymer membrane, licensed by Dupont to companies such as Ballard Power Systems, that is the 'electrolyte' of the fuel cell 'battery'. In lead acid batteries sulfuric acid is the electrolyte used in the chemical storage/release of electricity.
Ice would not allow the fuel cell vehicle to start to begin the process of reaching it's optimum operating temperature of 80 degrees Celcius, as in the case of the Regenerative Proton Exchange Membrane-based fuel cell.
To some extent gasoline powered vehicles have a similar limitation in climates where the needle routinely dips below minus 30 degrees. The author of this piece knows this intimately as on the evening of his first child's birth he forgot to plug the car in at the hospital and could not start the car to get home in the morning, although the birth turned out just fine, thank you.
The solution, as mentioned, is to plug a gasoline-powered car in to avoid the cold cranking problems associated with frozen batteries having too little amperage in that state to turn the car over. Putting further pressure on this behavior is overly thick (viscous) oil in the pan requiring more battery power to get the crank shaft and related assemblies started. The usual end result is a dead battery and/or the need for a cold boost.
At their current stage of development fuel cells would likely require plugging-in during down time to allow cold starting at any time, a scenario many of us are quite used to. Admittedly, this ice idea is a slight oversimplification of the problem, but it does serve to illustrate how the market overcomes gaps in technology which may not always be designed for universal acceptance -- as the passenger vehicle of today is not designed for universal use rolling off today's assembly lines.
Several aftermarket initiatives and/or dealer options, however, are available to deal with the severity of climate. One is an electric blanket used to shroud batteries during non-use that plug into standard electrical outlets. Another is a 'glow' plug inserted into the lower portion of a vehicle's engine block to warm the oil there and yet another performs the same task in the form of a heated dipstick.
A combination of these methods are used to avoid the cold-cranking difficulty, all of which require power from an external source on the order of one 40 watt incandescent light bulb.
The impact of these technological shortfalls in fuel cell vehicles is to delay their entry into market. The British government, Ballard Power Systems, The US government and others all have documents stating fuel cells will not begin entering into the marketplace until 2010-2012.
One source in Great Britain's Department of Trade and Industry is an Energy Innovation expert in Fuel Cells; Systems Electricity Technologies. This source agreed that the reason Iceland predicts it will not enter a hydrogen economy until roughly 2040 is that its market is too small to fuel hydrogen product development. Keeping in mind that this nation of approximately 200,000 people has nearly limitless geothermal electrical generation capability to produce a 'clean' supply of portable energy and it becomes apparent that what happens in the United States with respect to fuel policy has important and long lasting consequences for everyone.
While Iceland waits for the rest of us to catch up the most recent fuel policy amendments in the US call for ethanol to become more important in the marketplace.
Like gasoline from crude oil, ethanol is hydrogen rich. A new process to convert ethanol to hydrogen for use in a high-temperature fuel cell (approx. 120 degrees Centigrade) recently made public by researchers at MIT hasn't been commercialized yet. The promise of this technology is to extract three times the electrical energy from ethanol as hydrogen for use in a fuel cell than is available from the fuel by burning it in an internal combustion engine (ICE).
Comparatively, in terms of emissions and net energy density this makes ethanol an important choice in the transition to hydrogen as the fuel of choice.
No other policy comes as close to realizing the dream of hydrogen as a fuel source from renewable and relatively 'clean' energy.
And tomorrow I will tell you the reason why pumping this wonder fuel into the next generation of empty tanks is not in the best interests of business, government or consumers despite the apparent equilibrium its adoption would maintain within this economic backbone.
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