Toyota to announce hydrogen fuel cell breakthrough

...& thinking about it, isn't it redundant to have that xtra traction battery, 21kw or what not? I know it's needed due to the 'lag' inherent in fuel cell propulsion, so why not just invest more in battery R&D? With enough investment, could probably develop battery chemistry far more effective/efficient than you could with fuel cells, which only add complexity to an EV?


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No generator since fuel cell generates electricity. The battery is there to assist the FC stack for peak power demands in order to downsize the engine (FC stack).

 

I've been thinking about hydrogen, which I've often called a fraud. But it Toyota has come up with a 'point of sale', automated, methane-steam to hydrogen converter, it could work.

Hydrogen is pretty crapy stuff to deal with but methane is comparative benign. Best of all, we already have an efficient enough, methane distribution system.

So I'll keep an open mind for now IF there is a distributed to point-of-sale solution AND a fuel cell miracle or two.

Bob Wilson

 

They are investing in battery (lithium air), not just fuel cell.

The current battery cannot match fuel cell in weight, volume (compactness), refueling speed and cold weather performance. Electricity production is still a problem as 2/3 of energy is lost during generation, transmission and distribution.

Hydrogen is twice as efficient in fuel production.

 

431 miles range was tested in California realworld road. "About 300 miles" range is during winter from a different driver.

Why do I have to read your link and point it out?

 

You didn't need to read the link just your own.

Bold and italics mine.
So which is it, did the range drop from 431 to 300 because of the cold? Was 431 the true range? You posted the link, I just think it is misleading. Of course the cold is going to degrade performance, as I noted in my post. You need electricity to run the heater, just like in a BEV. As I noted in my post, because of the waste heat from fuel cells they likely would take less of a hit. Reread my post and tell me if you still have a problem. Also in my original reply, all car companies seem to do this, but we don't need to beleive it.

 

you are more optimistic than I am bill - I still see hydrogen distillation as a perfectly good waste of either natural gas or methane. Turning fossil fuel into electricity has never been a technology advancement if you're simply doing it in a much more expensive and complex manner. The other thing that I wonder about that Austin mentioned is the 'truck it in' from somewhere else notion, for refueling hydrogen; California plans to Jack up vehicle registration to pay billions to build just a hundred hydrogen refueling stations or so. That being the case - why are California Vehicle owners all set to take an expensive registration hit to build brick and mortar stations?? Imo, if it smells like something smells fishy ... what is it ...
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I'm pessimistic that these promises will meet the technological challenges in the next decade, but after that who knows. Just here to point out a few things. Natural gas is mainly methane, and it can be produced by fracking, but also by renewable means. The reason we use natural gas instead of the renewable means is it is much less expensive to drill or frack.

Well the fishy smell is california tried doing this in 2004, and it smelled, and there was coruption and collusion. The hundred or so stations is most likely 68, and will cost tax payers in california $200M.

What CARB and even toyota will tell you is to actually shift any decent number of people to fuel cells california likely needs 1500 hydrogen stations not 68, and certainly not the 9 they have today that service only hundreds of fcv. Now Toyota and the fuel cell lobby is hoping something magic will happen and some corporations will fund the $1B-$5B that is needed just for infrastruture in california. That may happen, but it is likely they will also all have to come from taxpayer money.

 

I'm pessimistic that these promises will meet the technological challenges in the next decade, but after that who knows. Just here to point out a few things. Natural gas is mainly methane, and it can be produced by fracking, but also by renewable means. The reason we use natural gas instead of the renewable means is it is much less expensive to drill or frack.

Well the fishy smell is california tried doing this in 2004, and it smelled, and there was coruption and collusion. The hundred or so stations is most likely 68, and will cost tax payers in california $200M.

What CARB and even toyota will tell you is to actually shift any decent number of people to fuel cells california likely needs 1500 hydrogen stations not 68, and certainly not the 9 they have today that service only hundreds of fcv. Now Toyota and the fuel cell lobby is hoping something magic will happen and some corporations will fund the $1B-$5B that is needed just for infrastruture in california. That may happen, but it is likely they will also all have to come from taxpayer money.

 

No generator, fuel cell provides all the on-board power.

 

So when all the Clarkson brigade say "hydrogen is the future", it'll now have to be changed to "Methane is the future" and we can then happily turn round and tell them they're talking crap?

(for the hard of understanding who read the forum; methane - sewerage - crap)

 

Not Toyota's model, but all FCEVs coming out have a traction battery. The fuel cell is the generator in a sense. It can also be viewed as a hydrogen-air battery with the hydrogen stored in a seperate tank. Fuel cell cars have always been EVs. The drive train is exactly the same as what would used in a BEV. It's why most sources use FCEV for short hand. In addition to avoiding confusion with totally unrelated subjects. Toyota is the only major manufacturer that uses FCV.

As you note, the traction pack is there to buffer the fuel cell's output rate. It also allows the car to move on start up while the fuel cell comes online.

There are already home fuel cell units that reform a natural gas in place. Get a plug in, and you have a fuel cell powered car without having to live in California. You also won't be tethered to natural gas and hydrogen to power your car.

 

I'd say fraud is too strong of a word, but it is exremely misleading.

First methane is the cheif component of of natural gas, bio gas, and city gas. The difference is natural gas has a certain purity and comes from the ground. biogas comes from sewage, dumps, or digesters. City gas comes from coal or petroleum. All are sometimes called metane and sometimes called natural gas.

Now the least expensive in the US is natural gas, the most expensive is biogas, but.... biogas is hazardous and an environmental problem, so many places austin included require the operators to capture it. The cheapest way to dispose of this captured gas is through turbines and fuel cells which convert it to electricity. In austin we use a mandate, california uses subsidies. Turbines are the cheapest way today, because they can be located at the source, and run when the gas comes out, and burn all the impurities, but are 35% efficient. Fuel cells are aout 50% efficient, and can be tied with a natural gas supply also to overcome problems with the biogas, but often require the gas to be pressurized and pumped and filtered. Bottom line is biogas may make the hydrogen greener, but it will just make that electrical generation browner (less renewables) resulting in no net environmental improvement. Unless you want your hydrogen pumps located at a landfill or a sewage treatment plant, its just misleading to say it makes the hydrogen better for the environment.

We do need more biogas capture at land fill, sewage treatment, and factory farms though, that is better for the environment and does not cost much compared to the environmental damage being done. Now the quotes
Toyota Sees Hydrogen Car Fill-Ups at Dealers to Trash Dumps - Bloomberg

 

Driver #1 got 431 miles.

Driver #2 got about 300 miles during both the winter and the warmer weather.

Which is it? Both. Different drivers.

You were the one trying to compare the range from driver #2 with driver #1, and starting the confusion.

 

Did driver 2 using heat get the exact same mileage in cold weather as warm weather. I really serioiusly doubt it. How did he test? What was the reason in warm weather he got so much worse mpge than driver 1.

Toyota put up driver 1 as real world, pretending it was comparable to epa in the press release. I find that misleading, but everyone seems to do it. Its the same as toyota claiming 15 mile aer in charge depletion in the prius phv, until the epa test came out, but.... at least they provided the route and conditions so we knew it was much easier than epa. Toyota has now shifted to a smaller vehicle. Do you think they would have done that if they could really get 68 mpge out of their fcv in 2009? They would only need to carry 5kg of hydrogen, and the new car carries that much. Sure the vehicle might have cost more, but it would have proven their point from 2009.

The second point is that your press release claims that using heat doesn't require any more electricity coming from the fuel cell, that either , that fchv-adv cell is magic and actually makes more electricity in the cold from the same amount of hydrogen, or magically transfers its waste heat into the cabin.

When you show us a test that actually is fair and does this, I'll believe the toyota pr guy. Otherwise, no the phv will not get 15 miles in charge depletion on an epa test, and the toyota fuel cell will follow the laws of thermodynamics and actually need more hydrogen to heat the cabin.

It comes to the verasity of the car companies pr. How about if we turn to gm instead of toyota. In 2008 lutz claimed that the volt would do as well as the prius in charge sustain mode. In 2009 we learned that volt would be heavier than the prius and have a less efficient engine. Do we still go with the 2008 claim? by the time of epa testing it was 37 mpg, in line with that 2009 knowlege. Well toyota's claim here that it is as efficient in mpge using hvac as without is just an obvious false claim. All the car companies do it, and I am sure if they ever sell a fcv in a cold place, you will be able to read about reduced range on the blogs.

Do you really think toyota has found a way around the physics of it?

 

What about pure hydrogen powered cars, like what BMW & Mazda had some years back? From what I recall, it sounded like hydrogen tanks feeding directly into an ICE, not much different from conventional gas powered combustion engines.. Was this ever a viable option?


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If we are using natural gas for the feed stock, the tests showed that you need less of it if you convert it to methanol than hydrogen as long as you are storing the hydrogen as a liquid and buring it in a ice. That methanol had a few small problems if burned as M100, but mix in 15% gasoline, to make M85 they found in the california tests all the problems went away. M85 would also have lower infrastructure costs. The methanol infrastructure was working in california, but the price of natural gas went up higher than gasoline, so most drivers with flex fuel cars switched back to gasoline. In 2004 when california introduced the hydrogen highway they killed methanol in the state. Now methanol is much less expensive than gasoline but the infrastructure was removed. The open fuel standard, which doesn't look like it will make it through congress, would support methanol again. With today's di and turbo technologies these new m85 cars could be more efficient (especially as hybrids or phevs) and also still burn gasoline just in case you can't make it to a station that has methanol.

The best way IMHO to substitute natural gas for oil though would be the picken's plan for heavy duty trucks changing from diesel to lng on new trucks. Unfortunately this has stalled in congress. Big suprise. The Koch brothers and the ethanol lobby hates both methanol and lng, and they spend a lot of money lobbying. States are picking it up though, so we may get a slow implementation.

metal hydride hydrogen storage would reduce the energy costs of compressing the hydrogen making the natural gas to fcv more efficient. This tech is still in the lab, but it could both reduce the cost of hydrogen and of fcv (less expensive tanks) making fuel cells more viable. It would make all the 10,000 psi hydrogen stations obsolete though. Hydrogen ice only made sense to test the infrastructure, not as a viable vehicle technology.

 

I'm still waiting to see spec's on how the manufacturers intend on dealing with embrittlemeant - which remains an issue weather hydrogen is at 2K lbs or 10,000 lbs psi.
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They were bi-, dual-, or whatever they call it, using gasoline or hydrogen. An issue with hydrogen is that its energy density per volume is low. Mazda's RX-8 had reduced power out put on hydrogen. BMW's maintained power output, but at reduced fuel economy. IIRC, it was a V12 that got abysmal fuel economy to begin with, but was better than the 4mpge it got on hydrogen.

These were gasoline engines converted to run hydrogen. An ICE designed just for hydrogen should perform better. A fuel cell will do better than that though.

 

Mostly by using type IV composite tanks and over engineering any metal parts. As with the CNG ones, the tanks will have a usable shelf life. The fuel cell also has limited service life. Whatever lengths those be, it will probably be recommended to replace all the lines, valves, etc.

Their life spans very well could be that of a typical car's. FCEV are likely going to have a low resale value though.