Ask Joe Mechanic - Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Vehicles

       This week we begin a discussion of two alternate energy forms, which go hand-in-hand, hydrogen gas and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. These forms are looked at as being very exciting and with lots of hope to give a renewable, environmentally safe, form of power in which we would have no foreign dependence whatsoever. Unfortunately, at this time, it is very expensive and not very efficient as you will see, and requires a lot more development before it will be economically feasible.

            A hydrogen vehicle is a vehicle that uses hydrogen as its onboard fuel for motive power. Hydrogen vehicles include hydrogen-fueled space rockets, as well as automobiles and other transportation vehicles. The power plants of such vehicles convert the chemical energy of hydrogen to mechanical energy either by burning hydrogen in an internal combustion engine, or by reacting hydrogen with oxygen in a fuel cell to run electric motors. Widespread use of hydrogen for fueling transportation is a key element of a proposed hydrogen economy.

             

Hydrogen fuel does not occur naturally on Earth and thus is not an energy source; rather it is an energy carrier. It is most frequently made from methane or other fossil fuels, but it can be produced using sources (such as wind, solar, or nuclear) that are intermittent, too diffuse or too cumbersome to directly propel vehicles. Integrated wind-to-hydrogen (power to gas) plants, using electrolysis of water, are exploring technologies to deliver costs low enough, and quantities great enough, to compete with traditional energy sources.

             

Many companies are working to develop technologies that might efficiently exploit the potential of hydrogen energy for use in motor vehicles. As of November 2013, there are demonstration fleets of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles undergoing field-testing including the Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell, Honda FCX Clarity, Hyundai ix35 Fuel Cell and Mercedes-Benz B-Class F-Cell. The attraction of using hydrogen as an energy currency is that, if hydrogen were prepared without using fossil fuel inputs, vehicle propulsion would not contribute to carbon dioxide emissions. The drawbacks of hydrogen use are high capital cost, low energy content per unit volume, production and compression of hydrogen, and the large investment in infrastructure that would be required to fuel vehicles.

 Buses, trains, PHB bicycles, canal boats, cargo bikes, golf carts, motorcycles, wheelchairs, ships, airplanes, submarines, and rockets can already run on hydrogen, in various forms. NASA used hydrogen to launch Space Shuttles into space. A working toy model car runs on solar power, using a regenerative fuel cell to store energy in the form of hydrogen and oxygen gas. It can then convert the fuel back into water to release the solar energy.

 The current land speed record for a hydrogen-powered vehicle is 286.476 mph (461.038 km/h) set by Ohio State University's Buckeye Bullet 2, which achieved a "flying-mile" speed of 280.007 mph (450.628 km/h) at the Bonneville Salt Flats in August 2008. For production-style vehicles, the current record for a hydrogen-powered vehicle is 333.38 km/h (207.2 mph) set by a prototype Ford Fusion Hydrogen 999 Fuel Cell Race Car at Bonneville Salt Flats in Wendover, Utah in August 2007.  A large compressed oxygen tank to increase power accompanied it.

Many automobile companies are currently researching the feasibility of commercially producing hydrogen cars, and some have introduced demonstration models in limited numbers. At the 2012 World Hydrogen Energy Conference, Daimler AG, Honda, Hyundai and Toyota all confirmed plans to produce hydrogen fuel cell vehicles for sale by 2015. General Motors said it had not abandoned fuel-cell technology and still plans to introduce hydrogen vehicles like the GM HydroGen4 to retail customers by 2015. Charles Freese, GM’s executive director of global powertrain engineering, stated that the company believes that both fuel-cell vehicles and battery electric vehicles are needed for reduction of greenhouse gases and reliance on oil.

In December 2012, Toyota announced its plans to limit its all-electric car development and instead concentrate on the development and launch of a fuel cell vehicle by 2015. In October 2013, Toyota announced it had reduced the cost of the fuel cell system in its next hydrogen-powered car by almost $1 million USD and expects to introduce a hydrogen mid-size sedan at a price of less than $100,000 USD by 2015. The practical concept of the fuel cell vehicle Toyota plans to launch around 2015, the FCV concept, was unveiled at the November 2013 Tokyo Motor Show. The fuel cell car will have a range of just over 300 mi (480 km), and it will take about three minutes to refill its twin hydrogen tanks. California, mainly the Los Angeles area, was chosen as the first rollout market due to its largest concentration of hydrogen fuel stations.

In 2009, Nissan started testing a new FC vehicle in Japan. Daimler has introduced its B-class demonstration FC vehicle.  In 2011, Hyundai introduced its Blue² ("Blue Square") fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV), and stated that it plans to have FCEVs available for sale by 2014. Honda stated in 2009 that it could start mass-producing vehicles based on its FCX Clarity concept car by the year 2020 and in 2009 stated that it saw hydrogen fuel cells as "a better long term bet than batteries and plug-in vehicles". In December 2010, however, it introduced the Honda Fit EV, an all-electric car version of the gasoline-powered Fit, using elements of its hydrogen engine design, stating that the "industry trend seems to be focused on the battery electric vehicle.”

In 2012, Lux Research, Inc. issued a report that stated: "The dream of a hydrogen economy ... is no nearer." It concluded that "Capital cost, not hydrogen supply, will limit adoption to a mere 5.9 GW" by 2030, providing "a nearly insurmountable barrier to adoption, except in niche applications.” Lux's analysis concluded that by 2030, the PEM stationary market would reach $1 billion, while the vehicle market, including forklifts, will reach a total of $2 billion.

 Hydrogen internal combustion engine cars are different from hydrogen fuel cell cars. The hydrogen internal combustion car is a slightly modified version of the traditional gasoline internal combustion engine car. These hydrogen engines burn fuel in the same manner that gasoline engines do.  Francois Isaac de Rivaz designed in 1807 the first hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine. Paul Dieges patented in 1970 a modification to internal combustion engines, which allowed a gasoline-powered engine to run on hydrogen US 3844262.

Mazda has developed Wankel engines burning hydrogen. The advantage of using ICE (internal combustion engine) like Wankel and piston engines is the cost of retooling for production is much lower. Existing-technology ICE can still be applied for solving those problems where fuel cells are not a viable solution insofar, for example in cold-weather applications.

A number of issues currently are seriously affecting the usage of hydrogen power. Cost is one major problem, issues with freezing temperatures is another. Also, the production, storage, transport and distribution of hydrogen as a fuel seriously limit its use.  Hydrogen fuel cells are relatively expensive to produce. As of October 2009, Fortune magazine estimated the cost of producing the Honda Clarity at $300,000 per car. Many designs require rare substances such as platinum as a catalyst. In 2010, a new nickel-tin nanometal catalyst was tested to lower the cost of fuel cells.

 The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimated in 2002 that the cost of a fuel cell for an automobile (assuming high-volume manufacturing) was approximately $275/kW, which translated into each vehicle costing more than $1 million USD. However, by 2010, DOE estimated the cost had fallen 80 percent and that automobile fuel cells might be manufactured for $51/kW, assuming high-volume manufacturing cost savings. The projected cost, assuming the DOE to be $47/kW for an 80 kW PEM fuel cell estimated a manufacturing volume of 500,000 units/year, using 2012 technology. Assuming a manufacturing volume of 10,000 units/year, however, the cost was projected to be $84/kW using 2012 technology.

 Temperatures below freezing are a concern with fuel cells operations. Operational fuel cells have an internal vaporous water environment that could solidify if the fuel cell and contents are not kept above 0° Celsius (32°F). Most fuel cell designs are not as yet robust enough to survive in below-freezing environments. Frozen solid, especially before start up, they would not be able to begin working. Once running though, heat is a byproduct of the fuel cell process, which would keep the fuel cell at an adequate operational temperature to function correctly. This makes startup of the fuel cell a concern in cold weather operation. Places such as Alaska where temperatures can reach −40 °C (−40 °F) at startup would not be able to use early model fuel cells. Ballard announced in 2006 that it had hit the U.S. DoE's 2010 target for cold weather starting which was 50 percent power achieved in 30 seconds at -20 °C. Fuel cells have startup and long term reliability problems.

Hydrogen does not come as a pre-existing source of energy like fossil fuels, but is first produced and then stored as a carrier, much like a battery. A suggested benefit of large-scale deployment of hydrogen vehicles is that it could lead to decreased emissions of greenhouse gases and ozone precursors.  According to the United States Department of Energy, "compared to ICE vehicles using gasoline ... fuel cell vehicles using hydrogen produced from natural gas reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent."

While methods of hydrogen production that do not use fossil fuel would be more sustainable, currently renewable energy represents only a small percentage of energy generated, and power produced from renewable sources can be used in electric vehicles and for non-vehicle applications.  The challenges facing the use of hydrogen in vehicles include production, storage, transport and distribution. Because of all these challenges, the well-to-wheel efficiency for hydrogen is less than 25 percent.

The molecular hydrogen needed as an on-board fuel for hydrogen vehicles can be obtained through many thermochemical methods utilizing natural gas, coal (by a process known as coal gasification), liquefied petroleum gas, biomass (biomass gasification), by a process called thermolysis, or as a microbial waste product called biohydrogen or Biological hydrogen production.  Ninety-five percent of hydrogen is produced using natural gas, and 85 percent of hydrogen produced is used to remove sulfur from gasoline. Hydrogen can also be produced from water by electrolysis or by chemical reduction using chemical hydrides or aluminum. Current technologies for manufacturing hydrogen use energy in various forms, totaling between 25 and 50 percent of the higher heating value of the hydrogen fuel, used to produce, compress or liquefy, and transmit the hydrogen by pipeline or truck.

 Environmental consequences of the production of hydrogen from fossil energy resources include the emission of greenhouse gases, a consequence that would also result from the on-board reforming of methanol into hydrogen. Studies comparing the environmental consequences of hydrogen production and use in fuel-cell vehicles to the refining of petroleum and combustion in conventional automobile engines find a net reduction of ozone and greenhouse gases in favor of hydrogen. Hydrogen production using renewable energy resources would not create such emissions or, in the case of biomass, would create near-zero net emissions assuming new biomass is grown in place of that converted to hydrogen. However, the same land could be used to create Biodiesel, usable with (at most) minor alterations to existing well-developed and relatively efficient diesel engines. In either case, the scale of renewable energy production today is small and would need to be greatly expanded for use in producing hydrogen for a significant part of transportation needs. As of December 2008, less than 3 percent of U.S. electricity was produced from renewable sources, not including dams. In a few countries, renewable sources are being used more widely to produce energy and hydrogen. For example, Iceland is using geothermal power to produce hydrogen, and Denmark is using wind.

 Hydrogen has a very low volumetric energy density at ambient conditions, equal to about one-third that of methane. Even when the fuel is stored as liquid hydrogen in a cryogenic tank or in a compressed hydrogen storage tank, the volumetric energy density (megajoules per liter) is small relative to that of gasoline. Hydrogen has a three times higher specific energy by mass compared to gasoline (143 MJ/kg versus 46.9 MJ/kg). Some research has been done into using special crystalline materials to store hydrogen at greater densities and at lower pressures. A recent study by Dutch researcher Robin Gremaud has shown that metal hydride hydrogen tanks are actually 40 to 60-percent lighter than an equivalent energy battery pack on an electric vehicle permitting greater range for H2 cars. In 2011, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory and University of Alabama, working with the U.S. Department of Energy, found a new single-stage method for recharging ammonia borane, hydrogen storage compound.

 The hydrogen infrastructure consists mainly of industrial hydrogen pipeline transport and hydrogen-equipped filling stations like those found on a hydrogen highway. Hydrogen stations, which are not situated near a hydrogen pipeline, can obtain supply via hydrogen tanks, compressed hydrogen tube trailers, liquid hydrogen tank trucks or dedicated onsite production.

Hydrogen use would require the alteration of industry and transport on a scale never seen before in history. For example, according to GM, 70 percent of the US population lives near a hydrogen-generating facility but has little access to hydrogen, despite its wide availability for commercial use. The distribution of hydrogen fuel for vehicles throughout the U.S. would require new hydrogen stations that would cost, by some estimates approximately 20 billion dollars and 4.6 billion in the EU. Other estimates place the cost as high as half trillion dollars in the United States alone.

 The California Hydrogen Highway is an initiative to build a series of hydrogen refueling stations along California state highways. As of June 2012, 23 stations were in operation, mostly in and around Los Angeles, with a few in the Bay area. South Carolina also has a hydrogen freeway project, and the first two hydrogen-fueling stations opened in 2009 in Aiken and Columbia, South Carolina. The University of South Carolina, a founding member of the South Carolina Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Alliance, received 12.5 million dollars from the Department of Energy for its Future Fuels Program.

Hydrogen codes and standards, as well as codes and technical standards for hydrogen safety and the storage of hydrogen, have been identified as an institutional barrier to deploying hydrogen technologies and developing a hydrogen economy. To enable the commercialization of hydrogen in consumer products, new codes and standards must be developed and adopted by federal, state and local governments.

Critics claim the time frame for overcoming the technical and economic challenges to implementing wide-scale use of hydrogen cars is likely to last for at least several decades, and hydrogen vehicles may never become broadly available. They claim that the focus on the use of the hydrogen car is a dangerous detour from more readily available solutions to reducing the use of fossil fuels in vehicles.  In May 2008, Wired News reported that "experts say it will be 40 years or more before hydrogen has any meaningful impact on gasoline consumption or global warming, and we can't afford to wait that long. In the meantime, fuel cells are diverting resources from more immediate solutions."

 K. G. Duleep commented "a strong case exists for continuing fuel-efficiency improvements from conventional technology at relatively low cost." Critiques of hydrogen vehicles are presented in the 2006 documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?. According to former U.S. Department of Energy official Joseph Romm, "A hydrogen car is one of the least efficient, most expensive ways to reduce greenhouse gases." Asked when hydrogen cars will be broadly available, Romm replied: "Not in our lifetime, and very possibly never." The Los Angeles Times wrote, in February 2009, "Hydrogen fuel-cell technology won't work in cars. ... Any way you look at it, hydrogen is a lousy way to move cars."

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2008 that "Top executives from General Motors Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. Tuesday expressed doubts about the viability of hydrogen fuel cells for mass-market production in the near term and suggested their companies are now betting that electric cars will prove to be a better way to reduce fuel consumption and cut tailpipe emissions on a large scale." The Economist magazine, in September 2008, quoted Robert Zubrin, the author of Energy Victory, as saying: "Hydrogen is 'just about the worst possible vehicle fuel'".

The magazine noted the withdrawal of California from earlier goals: "In March [2008] the California Air Resources Board, an agency of California's state government and a bellwether for state governments across America, changed its requirement for the number of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) to be built and sold in California between 2012 and 2014. The revised mandate allows manufacturers to comply with the rules by building more battery-electric cars instead of fuel-cell vehicles." The magazine also noted that most hydrogen is produced through steam reformation, which creates at least as much emission of carbon per mile as some of today's gasoline cars. On the other hand, if the hydrogen could be produced using renewable energy, "it would surely be easier simply to use this energy to charge the batteries of all-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles."

The Washington Post asked in November 2009, "But why would you want to store energy in the form of hydrogen and then use that hydrogen to produce electricity for a motor, when electrical energy is already waiting to be sucked out of sockets all over America and stored in auto batteries?”  December 2009 study at UC Davis, published in the Journal of Power Sources, found that, over their lifetimes, hydrogen vehicles would emit more carbon than gasoline vehicles. The Motley Fool stated in 2013 that "there are still cost-prohibitive obstacles [for hydrogen cars] relating to transportation, storage, and, most importantly, production."

 Volkswagen's Rudolf Krebs said in 2013 "no matter how excellent you make the cars themselves, the laws of physics hinder their overall efficiency. The most efficient way to convert energy to mobility is electricity." He elaborated: "Hydrogen mobility only makes sense if you use green energy", but ... you need to convert it first into hydrogen "with low efficiencies" where "you lose about 40 percent of the initial energy". You then must compress the hydrogen and store it under high pressure in tanks, which uses more energy. "And then you have to convert the hydrogen back to electricity in a fuel cell with another efficiency loss". Krebs continued: "in the end, from your original 100 percent of electric energy, you end up with 30 to 40 percent." In 2013, Volkswagen signed a $60 million to $100 million engineering services deal with Ballard for the development of fuel cells to move ahead faster with new power transportation technologies. The Business Insider commented:

“Pure hydrogen can be industrially derived, but it takes energy. If that energy does not come from renewable sources, then fuel-cell cars are not as clean as they seem. ... Another challenge is the lack of infrastructure. Gas stations need to invest in the ability to refuel hydrogen tanks before FCEVs become practical, and it's unlikely many will do that while there are so few customers on the road today. ... Compounding the lack of infrastructure is the high cost of the technology. Fuel cells are "still very, very expensive.”

In 2013, The New York Times stated that there are only 10 publicly accessible hydrogen filling stations in the U.S., eight of which are in Southern California, and that BEVs' cost-per-mile expense in 2013 is one-third as much as hydrogen cars, when comparing electricity from the grid and hydrogen at a filling station. The Times commented: "By the time Toyota sells its first fuel-cell sedan, there will be about a half-million plug-in vehicles on the road in the United States – and tens of thousands of E.V. charging stations." In 2013, John Swanton of the California Air Resources Board, who sees them as complementary technologies, stated that EVs have the jump on fuel-cell autos, which "are like electric vehicles were 10 years ago. EVs are for real consumers, no strings attached. With EVs you have a lot of infrastructure in place.

The Business Insider, in 2013 commented that if the energy to produce hydrogen "does not come from renewable sources, then fuel-cell cars are not as clean as they seem. ... Gas stations need to invest in the ability to refuel hydrogen tanks before FCEVs become practical, and it's unlikely many will do that while there are so few customers on the road today. ... Compounding the lack of infrastructure is the high cost of the technology. Fuel cells are "still very, very expensive", even compared to battery-powered EVs.

From what we see in this information, it seems that it will be a long time, if ever, before hydrogen or fuel cell power become a viable and economical alternation to the gasoline internal combustion engine.

Portions of this week’s column were sourced from Wikipedia.org.

This week’s recalls: 7,935 2014 Ram ProMaster vehicles:
If the accelerator pedal is pushed downward at a certain angle, the pedal may get stuck in the wide open throttle position due to interference with the accelerator pedal stopper. A stuck accelerator pedal can result in uncontrolled acceleration, increasing the risk of a crash.

5,001 Aston Martin 2008-2014 DB9 and V8 Vantage, 2009-2012 DBS, 2010-2012 Rapide, 2014 Rapide S, 2011-2012 V12 Vantage, 2011-2014 V8 Vantage S and 2012 Virage vehicles:
Due to a manufacturing error, the accelerator pedal arm may break. If the accelerator pedal arm breaks, the engine will return to idle and the driver will be unable to maintain or increase engine speed, increasing the risk of a crash.
31,581 B&W Custom Truck Beds (B&W):
Is recalling certain Tow & Stow Adjustable Ball Mounts manufactured from February 7, 2013, through January 7, 2014 and equipped with Nitrotec-coated steel pins to secure the ball mounts to the trailer hitches. The securing pins of the affected ball mounts may fracture while being used. If the securing pin fractures, the trailer being towed could separate from the vehicle increasing the risk of a crash.
3,773,379 Graco Children's Products, Inc. (Graco) is recalling model year 2009 through 2013 toddler and booster child restraints, models Cozy Cline, Comfort Sport, Classic Ride 50, My Ride 65, My Ride with Safety Surround, My Ride 70, Size 4 Me 70, Smartseat, Nautilus, Nautilus Elite, and Argos 70.
The alleged defect involves difficulty in unlatching the harness buckle. In some cases, the buckle becomes stuck in a latched condition so that depressing the buckle’s release button cannot open it. It may be difficult to remove the child from the restraint, increasing the risk of injury in the event of a vehicle crash, fire, or other emergency, in which a prompt exit from the vehicle is required.
Please check with your local dealership or the manufacturer for more information and how you should proceed.