Cost Of Hydrogen

High hopes, and hurdles, for hydrogen cars

After being championed by former President George W. Bush as a pollution-free solution for weaning America off its dependence on foreign oil, the vehicles are in danger of losing research and development funding under the Obama administration, which argues that plug-in electric cars are a more practical bet.

However, major automakers and other proponents of hydrogen-fueled cars managed to thwart similar attempts to cut funding for programs for fuel-cell research in 2009 and hope to do so again.

Nevertheless, they're worried about the signal the Obama administration's stance is sending to the marketplace and to investors about the vehicles, which create electric power from hydrogen and emit nothing but clean water from their tailpipes.

"We're prepared to make thousands of these cars," says Mike O'Brien , vice president of product planning at Hyundai Motor America. "But it really comes down to how many fuel stations there are at that point. It's a chicken and egg story for us."

Energy Secretary Steven Chu maintains that hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles need technological miracles too distant to warrant funding when electric cars are a far more promising near-term prospect to give American consumers an alternative to the roughly 230 million gas-guzzlers on the road.

Automakers, who have pumped billions of dollars into hydrogen technology, say Chu's assessment is out of date and doesn't reflect breakthroughs and developments that are dramatically bringing down costs.

Several automakers already have hydrogen-powered cars on the road, including the FCX Clarity , a make that Honda leases to roughly 20 customers in Southern California .

Critics say the car, early iterations of which cost more than a million dollars each to build, shows the technology is too expensive.

Stephen Ellis, manager of fuel cell marketing for American Honda Motor Co., says that thinking is flawed.

"If we made the Honda Odyssey in these quantities, they would be $1 million vehicles," says Ellis. "When we have a dedicated assembly line and we calculate with scale in 2015 to 2020, what the price will be then is what's relevant.

Future Perfect: Technologies for low cost hydrogen fuel cells ...

Posted 17 June 2011, by Balakrishnan Ramachandran , EcoFriend, ecofriend.com

What’s happening right now:

Ever since the former US President George Bush Jr announced the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative in 2003 ,major efforts both in the US and in other countries are being made to bring about what is termed as the hydrogen economy, in order to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and mitigate the effects of global warming.

In a fuel cell hydrogen gas is pumped into the anode compartment of the cell where in the presence of the catalyst , it splits into protons and electrons. The protons pass through the membrane and combine with the oxygen pumped into the cathode compartment to produce water as the harmless by-product while the electrons are conducted away to generate electrical current.

This electricity can then be used with, for example electric motors to drive a vehicle. The idea is not new at all , having been postulated by the German scientist Schonbein as far back as 1838 . Fuel Cells have also been used to power space vehicles . The essential challenge today is to make this technology low enough in cost to get acceptance as the alternative to fossil fuel engines that power our cars and other personal transport vehicles and in other stationary applications. The two major areas that researchers are focusing on are, reducing the cost of the fuel cell itself . This, today is at around $60 per Kilowatt. The second area is to evolve cheaper means of Hydrogen production.

Trends:

The major cost element in the fuel cell is the platinum catalyst , both because it is a precious metal and because it gets easily contaminated. Two new approaches illustrate the importance researchers are giving to reduce Platinum usage.

1. Lung inspired Fuel Cell

Researchers at the Norwegian Academy of Sciences have used the human lung as the inspiration to design a system to deliver the Hydrogen and Oxygen gases through capillary like paths to interact with the platinum catalyst. This increases the surface area of interaction and reduces the usage of Platinum.

2. Plant inspired Fuel Cell

Another such approach by the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Labs with researchers from the Stanford University and the Danish Technical University does away with Platinum altogether by using sunlight and water . Slender light absorbers of silicon dotted with newly developed catalysts are arrayed like pillars and these cause the water to split into Hydrogen as efficiently as fuel cells with Platinum catalysts.

Hydrogen and fuel cells, emerging technologies and applications

Nuclear Science Nuclear Production of Hydrogen, Third Information Exchange Meeting, Oarai, Japan, 5-7 October 2005

Pathways to a hydrogen future

Hydrogen Energy, Economic and Social Challenges

Potential applications of concentrated solar photons, a report prepared by the Committee on Potential Applications of Concentrated Solar Photons, Energy Engineering Board, Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems, National Research Council