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| History of Fuel Cells |
| 05.04.05 (10:58 am) [edit] |
First fuel cell was built in 1839 by William Robert Grove. Advancements in technology occurred overtime and first real use of fuel cells was done much later in 1976s. Nasa got GM to work on the fuel cells for its Gemini and Apollo.
Then came the oil shock of 1970s. This prompted the government to go for searching the alternatives source of energy and they landed at fuel cells. The replacement of gasoline cars with fuel cell cars became a viable alternative in order to make the country less dependent on fossil fuels.
For next 20 years, not much advancement was done in development of the fuel cells as it was too costly to go for it. Then came Ballard and International Fuel Cells as the major contributors in the development of the fuel cells. In the present times, a lot of automakers are pushing for development of the fuel cell vehicles. BMW, GM are few of them who are actively focusing on fuel cell vehicles.
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| Reva to develop fuel cell cars |
| 05.04.05 (10:44 am) [edit] |
Reva an Indian company into electric cars has gone into agreement with Hydrogenics Corporation a Canadian based company to develop fuel cell hydrogen cars. Reva will use its technology which is primarily in electric vehicles with fuel cells provided by Hydrogenics Corporation. In the first phase of production 2 hydrogen fuel cell cars will be developed followed by 10-12 cars.
These fuel cell cars will be used at Delhi and Taj Mahal to promote eco tourism. These cars hold great promise for the future as they produce 0 emission, low noise and have high efficiency though it comes with a heavy price tag as of now.
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| How Fuel Cells Work |
| 05.04.05 (10:17 am) [edit] |
How Fuel Cells Work
[b]How fuel cells work[/b]. Well, we would look at it in this article. A fuel cell stack is a stack of bipolar electrode plates with membranes amid. An usual 50-kW stack encloses about 25 bipolar plates. When a PEM fuel cell runs, hydrogen go by the catalyst at the anode and is ripped into a proton and electron. The proton then goes by through, or switch over through the membrane while the electron is consumed for electricity. Oxygen go by the cathode and come together with the hydrogen proton and electron to create water. When clean hydrogen is used as the fuel, the only products are heat, water and electricity.
Hydrogen is the must plentiful element on earth, but it is not easy to come by in its pure form. Therefore, many fuel cells systems slot in a fuel reformer or fuel processor. The fuel reformer pull out the hydrogen from more common hydrocarbons like methanol, natural gas, petroleum or diesel. When using one of these fuels, the discharge from the fuel cell is still just water, heat and electricity. However, the discharge from the entire methods include CO2, NOx, SOx, carbon monoxide and particulates
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| Disadvantage of fuel cells |
| 05.04.05 (10:01 am) [edit] |
Fuel cells have several advantages. However, in this article we would discuss about the disadvantage of fuel cells. The first and foremost disadvantage of fuel cells is:
1. Fuel storage
Due to low density of the hydrogen, it is difficult to store enough hydrogen in the car, which could enable the car to go more then 100 miles. Hydrogen could be stored as slush or hydrogen in solid form. This is a efficient way of hydrogen but the metals used to make the containers are very expensive and heavy.
2. Hydrogen is expensive
Hydrogen is costly as compared to gasoline.
3. Availability or fuel
Very little refueling stations are there in the present times for refueling of hydrogen and is not reachable for all the people.
4. Production of Hydrogen fuel
The production of hydrogen has many economic and environmental disadvantages. One of the processes to create hydrogen is:
CH4 + H2O = 3H2 + CO
The production of carbon monoxide is fatal. CO is poisonous gas.
5. Cost of infrastructure
High cost is involved in creating the infrastructure or refueling stations for hydrogen.
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| Hydrogen cars: Government and GM sign deal to write the future in automobile industry |
| 04.04.05 (12:35 pm) [edit] |
GM and the Energy Department have signed new development deal under which GM is going to spend $44 million in the process. The Government will shoulder the other $44 million. The have agreed to build 40 fuel cell cars in the next 5 years.
Shell hydrogen has promised to setup 5 refueling stations at California, New York, Washington and along Eastern seaboard. These environment vehicles run on the energy produced due to mixing of hydrogen and oxygen. The byproducts from this process are water. Till now this technology was only used on test vehicles.
The cost of the car and lack of fueling stations makes Hydrogen cars unmarketable in near future.
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| Hydrogen cars : What are the plans of automakers? |
| 04.04.05 (12:22 pm) [edit] |
BMW H2R the fastest amongst hydrogen cars was displayed at National Hydrogen Association Conference in Washington. This clearly shows what hydrogen cars are capable of. I am not sure of its market viability in the near future but it holds great promise to the present oil crisis scenario and environment concerns.
BMW H2R has a 12 cylinder internal combustion engine and runs at a top speed of 182 mph. The hydrogen car from BMW has set 9 records over other hydrogen cars in the present time. If marketability of these cars is improved then this is going to be the greatest invention of the modern times.
BMW is one of the automaker, which are in the race of hydrogen cars which seems a dream at present times. Hydrogen is used as fuel since long at NASA to power rockets in its space programs. In 2003, Bush announced a $1.2 billion Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, which made automakers look more closely for the possibility of developing Hydrogen cars for public use.
Daimler-Chrysler, Ford Motor Company, ChevronTexaco and General Motors have jumped into the development of hydrogen cars. BMW is doing research on internal combustion engine for its hydrogen car program where as Ballard is developing cars powered by fuel cells, which use hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity. The system works very similar to an electric car.
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