What if you could replace your engine with an electric motor? There simply isn’t time to produce thousands of brand new cars, and it certainly would produce way more emissions than we’d save, switching to electric transportation. BUT, with 1.5 bn or so vehicles out there, what if we just replaced the engines with electric motors, added electric batteries or Hydrogen Fuel Cells, replaced the fuel tank with a compressed H2 tank and recycled the engines to make more kits?
Buzz-Greening The World’s Fleets
As the world grapples with the, seemingly intractable problems of reversing Climate change, car manufacturers have been embracing Hydrogen Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) technologies. Pioneers in the field include like Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc. (Japan), The Hyundai Motor Company (South Korea), Daimler AG (Mercedes-Benz) (Germany), BMW (Germany), General Motors Company (U.S.), Groupe Renault (France), Mazda Motor Corporation (Japan), Hydrogenics (Canada), Kia Motor Corporation (South Korea), Tata Motors Limited (India).
But prices for PEMFC are still high, with the attendant problem of hydrogen supply and distribution networks for refuelling. So, while the technology is likely to prove attractive to environmentally aware buyers, owing to the use of fewer toxic materials, like Lithium, used for batteries to power standard electric vehicles, and considerable advantages in terms of range and refuelling, vs. recharging time, price barriers and fuel availability remain considerable obstacles.
Recommended: Environmental Costs Of Lithium Battery Addiction: Worldwide
Slowing down, and eventually reversing Climate Change, however, remains a key objective, increasingly adopted by most developed and many developing nations, owing to the, now universal recognition of the anthropogenic contributions that drive this catastrophic phenomenon.
Breaking the logjam, creating new, ‘green’ jobs and rolling out the new PEMFC technologies in a sustainable, more affordable format is perhaps one of the greatest challenges of the Climate Crisis to break the fossil fuel dependency. But the picture is far from pessimistic.
“The Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle Market is undergoing various changes with evolving customer expectations, acceleration of technological innovation, and shifts in competitive power. Increasing number of funding commitments for the commercialization and development of refueling infrastructure will be crucial factors for the growth of the market in the years to come. The global Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle Market has been segmented, based on technology, of which the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) segment accounted for the largest market share in the forecasted period. On the basis of vehicle type, it is segmented into commercial car and passenger cars.”
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle Market: 2019 Global Size, Trends, Share, Leading Company, Merger, Acquisition, Demand, Growth Factors, Regional, And Industry Forecast To 2023
Background: Electric Vehicles By Power Source
Since the advent of electric, Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEVs) Lithium batteries have come to dominate the markets. Yet Lithium scarcity undeniably favours other forms of onboard power and this favours PEMFCs, owing to the lower requirements for rare earths. That is not to say that Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) would have it all their way; new types of batteries continue to pose a challenge to their future market share.
What is meant by electric vehicles?
The electric car (also known as electric vehicle or EV) uses energy stored in its rechargeable batteries, which are recharged by common household electricity. Unlike a hybrid car - which is fuelled by gasoline and uses a battery and motor to improve efficiency -an electric car is powered exclusively by electricity.
For example, Sila Nanotechnologies offer alternative solutions to Li-ion batteries, by using silicon-dominant anodes in their battery design which, the Company claims, are ready to ‘slot in’ to existing battery manufacturing processes. But in the comparison of Li-ion vs PEMSFCs, while Lithium remains a scarce material, its extraction requiring environmentally destructive mining methods, it does offer considerable advantages over hydrogen. Furo systems explain:
Hydrogen used in fuel cells has an energy to weight ratio ten times greater than lithium-ion batteries. Consequently, it offers much greater range while being lighter and occupying smaller volumes. It can also be recharged in a few minutes, similarly to gasoline vehicles. However, Hydrogen fuel cells also come with a lot of drawbacks. First of all, hydrogen is mainly obtained from water through electrolysis which is basically a reversed fuel cell and takes electricity and water to produce Hydrogen and Oxygen. The source of this electricity can range from renewables to coal depending on where you are in the world, hence hydrogen extraction can be very clean or dirtier than a typical gasoline car. Nowadays, sadly, it is more likely to be the latter simply because of the way the majority of the electricity is produced on Earth. Other issues are that storing hydrogen as a gas is expensive and energy intensive, sometimes as much as half the energy it contains, and even more so when it is stored as a liquid at cryogenic temperatures. In addition, it is highly flammable, tends to escape containment and reacts with metals in a way than renders them more brittle and prone to breakage. Eventually, although it is everywhere around us, hydrogen is hard, dangerous and expensive to produce, store and transport. Fuel cells can also only operate with water, not steam nor ice. Therefore, managing internal temperatures is essential and heat has to be constantly evacuated through radiators and cooling channels which add considerable amounts of weight. Restarting in cold temperatures can also be very complicated and impractical in locations that often experience temperatures below freezing point. - Manufacturable Economically, at Global Scale produce engineered materials that dramatically increase the energy density of rechargeable Li-ion batteries
Nonetheless, H2 Fuel Cell vehicles have their supporters, especially in California, Japan and some parts of Europe, with China and South Korea recently joining the number of Countries moving into the manufacture of FCEVs.
Back in 2016, Scott Samuelsen, a professor emeritus of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, Irvine, and director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center, located at UC Irvine - published an article on the IEEE website, in which he claims:
"While fuel-cell cars are just now gaining a toehold in today’s market, I believe that within the next quarter century, the majority of car buyers entering the showroom will select an FCEV as their primary means of transportation, and because of limitations in range and recharging speed, they will consider a BEV only as an option for their second car.
But, in effect, the message is the same: fossil fuels and internal combustion engines have more or less had their day and the world is ready for the next technological hike. What will determine which of these technologies emerge as the victor - if any - will largely depend on cost, availability of fuel refuelling/recharging points, refuelling speed and range.
Discussing the merits of these is beyond the scope of this paper, that seeks to propose a shortcut to the adoption of clean tech, to drastically reduce carbon emissions from automotive sources, one of the largest sources to date, but below is a rough summary table 1, below." - Range, adaptability, and refueling time will put hydrogen fuel cells ahead of the competition
Technology
|
market-penetration |
fuelling/charging |
vehicle costs |
fuel cost |
env impacts |
| Fossil fuels |
universal |
fast / common |
low |
varies |
very high |
| Li-ion EVs |
surging |
slow / relatively common |
mid-range |
cheap |
medium-high |
| FCEVs |
infancy |
fast / rare |
high |
dear* |
medium |
| Other EVs tech |
developmental |
unknown / unknown |
unknown |
unknown |
unknown |
Table 1 comparison of technologies | *currently mostly from hydrocarbons reformation
Overcoming the cost obstacles.
Whether we favour Li-ion or PEMFCs, the issues remain similar: vehicle costs, access to recharging/refuelling and fuel costs. Let’s look at these individually, and then compare.
Undoubtedly electric vehicles, even where moderately priced, like the Nissan Leaf, the Renault Zoe and others, still still fail to compete with ‘traditional’ vehicles (Table 2), with the cheapest vehicles available for under £5,000, and mid-range at a modest £10,000.
Table 2 - Cost comparison of EVs (Buy a Car)
So, Why Not Just Swap I.C. Engines For Electric Kits?
Watch these videos of how some people have done just that!
Amazing Electric Conversions - EV West | Fully Charged
Buzz-Greening The World’s Fleets
Recommended: Electric Bicycles And Cars Were Ones Classic Models: Retro
H2 Fuel Availability.
A limting factor for Hydrogen tech is the availability of Hydrogen distribution pumps. Although demand for H2 is growing at a vertiginous pace, the majority of Hydrogen production is still by steam reformation of hydrocarbons, and the fuel delivery infrastructure still in its infancy, compared to fossil fuels. Nevertheless, the combination of Wind/PV Solar and PEM Electrolytic Calls - that split water electrochemically, in the reverse of PEM Fuel cells, that recombine it to retrieve the energy applied to 'free' of the H2 atoms - is already a promising avenue for production. But new, exciting techniques are emerging, that seek to make the process moer efficient and economical viable.
"A promising way to use heat from carbon-free sources such as concentrated solar or nuclear is to drive chemical reactions for the production of fuels for the transport sector. Recent developments offer attractive medium- to long-term prospects for the provision of hydrogen and synthetic fuels. It is possible to use solar heat directly to split H2O into H2 and O2 or CO2 into CO and O2. However, these single-step processes require operating temperatures above 2000 °C, which places high demands on materials and process conditions. To reduce these extremely high operating temperatures and eliminate the need for high-temperature gas separation, current research activities focus on alternative thermochemical cycles. The most prominent examples are cycles from the sulfur family, the hybrid sulfur and sulfur–iodine process, cycles applying metal–metal oxide pairs or multivalent metal oxides, and low-temperature cycles such as hybrid Cu-Cl. The current analysis gives an overview on recent developments and the state-of-the-art of those cycles. It looks at the most important performance parameters involved and provides an outlook on further potential and necessary developments." - Hydrogen production via thermochemical water splitting, M.Roeb, C.Agrafiotis, C.Sattler German Aerospace Center (DLR), Köln, Germany - in Compendium of Hydrogen Energy Hydrogen Production and Purification Woodhead Publishing Series in Energy
So, where and when?
The question of where and when will H2FC vehicles begin to surge is one of a chicken and very large. profitable egg, but it would be presumptuous to make predictions on how the vehicle market will progress form internal combustion engines and fossil fuels, to electric, Lithium battery vehicles and H2 PEM Fuel Cells.
What is certain is that it will not be fast enough to make a dent in the vehicular emissions that are contributing to the Climate crisis, and so Replacement Kits must be an intermediate choice that brings very real, fast and affordable change at a more sustainable pace, without the enormous emissions attendant on replacing the whole of the world's fleets.
H2 AND Li-On tech are more or less there, ready for this leap of faith for governments, manufacturers and the myriad of garages out there, looking at a paradigm shift that could leave them out of business, unless they tech-up and prepare for change. Subsidies will be key, to these two aspects of the drive for change, and so will those for H2 production by renewables. Will it be enough, fast enough? The answer is in the readership of sites like this, those prepared to put their money, investments and enterprise on the line, and launch schemes, investment vehicles, partnerships and campaigns.
In other words: don't just watch this space for advances that could free us from Fossil Fuel, fill this space, with your ideas, your innovation and ingenuity. Can't act alone? How about co-operative enterprise? Don't have the funds, how about Ethical Banking, Crowdfunder, Indiegogo, Zopa, Green Startups?
Be The Change You Want To See In The World!
Articles on photo/electrochemical H2 production:
• Hydrogen Production: Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-photoelectrochemical-water-splitting
• Hydrogen Production: Thermochemical Water Splitting
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-thermochemical-water-splitting
• Thermochemical hydrogen production from water using reducible oxide materials: a critical review
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40243-013-0007-0
• Life cycle assessment of hydrogen production via thermochemical water splitting using multi-step Cu–Cl cycles
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652612001837
Other resources:
• Intelligent Energy
https://www.intelligent-energy.com/
• List of H2FC Vehicles (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fuel_cell_vehicles
© Toni Massari, 8th September 2019 (UK)
Before you go!
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