Toyota to announce hydrogen fuel cell breakthrough

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If the goal is to reduce oil use and ghg then the pickens plan of lng for long haul trucking+ using cng for local buses and delivery trucks (medium and heavy vehicles) is much less expensive and would likely be more effective. Making the local vehicles phevs + cng would reduce it even more.

For light vehicles like cars, fuel cells require less natural gas than non-hybrid cng cars, and both require infrastructure. Here the trick is to somehow make a hybrid cng vehicle, but none of the autocompanies want to do that, some do want to do fuel cells. The key here is cost. fuel cell vehicles cost much more than a phev, but if someone can make them cheaper then the infrastructure may be worthwhile.

 

Interesting news about BEVs and pollution in China:

AD #1411 – China’s Dirty EVs, Kia’s Sound of Music, Nissan’s Refreshed 2015 Juke – Autoline Daily



iPhone ?

 

And our problem is this;

UK cities will exceed EU pollution limits until 2030, figures show | Environment | The Guardian

 

I bought into the long tailpipe argument beck during the initial ZEV program. While shifting from dirty cars to dirty electric generation isn't much of an improvement; the tailpipe argument overlooks the fact that where the pollution is created is a consideration. It also only looks at the present.

Generally, power plants are located away from population centers. While some emissions, like CO2, have global and long reaching impacts; others have an immediate impact. NOx and other smog forming compounds might be carried to a city from a power plant by prevailing winds. They will definitively cause issues when produced by cars within the city. Then particulates and CO have a bigger impact on public health the closer the emitters are to people. Using dirty electric for BEVs isn't quite 'sweeping it under the rug'. It's more BBQing in your backyard instead of dragging the grill into the kitchen.

Then there is the issue of time. In the US, the average age of registered cars is 11+ years. As they age, an ICE car will emit more and more pollutants. Even clean ones. Wear and time lead to the engine getting dirtier and the emission controls losing their effectiveness. Emission regulations allow for this. Power plants will also suffer from this wear and time, but they are easier to regulate and inspect. New, cleaner plants and cars would be great, but not realistic in all cases. It is much cheaper to maintain and upgrade emission controls on a stationary power plants as opposed to thousands of moving cars. Some emissions, such as CO2, can't even be reduced on a car.

Then ICEs have their own long tailpipe. As time advances, we will use up the cleaner and easier to extract petroleum. To meet demand, we will move to sources that take more energy and resources to extract and/or process into a final product. This will increase an ICE car's overall emissions moving into the future. Most industrialized countries are investing in cleaner, and some sustainable, electric generation. As these plants come online, all the BEVs on the road will get cleaner.

 

I was only really refering to the US situation.

Autoline Daily's snark about coal, seems to imply that China would be better off without EVs. The country is buying 20 million cars a year (biggest market), and particulates from the cars and power plants are a major problem. Power plants are much easier to fix than tailpipes. The government can close the worst ones down and put scrubbers on the rest. Adding scrubbers can get rid of most of the unhealthy pollution.

As for CO2, I doubt the Chinese are thinking much about it. Going fuel cell would not help here over plug-ins, as infrastructure would mean they can not build volume as fast. Hydrogen in china would be made from coal and alectricity, so it would not reduce coal usage. Oil is a bigger problem in china than coal. I would put reducing the oil appetitie as higher on their priority list than ghg. They also are working with methanol for cars, which can be made renewably or from natural gas or in china's case coal. china currently makes some of their diesel from coal too. Countries like the US and Australia seem happy to export coal to china, but OPEC and russia are more problematic politically with the oil.
With the situation in Syria and Iraq, oil money funded ISIS, getting less dependant on oil should be a big priority for everyone.

 

Found this interesting article, about 'green' hydrogen production using solar power... Is it possible that this company can actually make efficient use of photosynthesis to make this a real world solution?


HyperSolar Comments on Hydrogen-Powered 2015 Toyota Fuel Cell Vehicle

 

Here is another interesting one.

New Hydrogen Production Method Could Help Store Renewable Energy

 

Of course it would be great to improve on electrolysis but that's pretty simple to make H2 from solar with electrolysis.

Did you folks see the infamous video on YouTube, Who Killed the H2 Car?
http://www.google.com/url?url=http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DK3GDjVskYIs&rct=j&frm=1&q=&esrc=s&sa=U&ei=2H8hVIPABIbwiwKn2YHABA&ved=0CBUQtwIwAA&usg=AFQjCNGVm3eHB8gcYoVUTosUy8eBIuYEeQ

Help me debunk the video. I am thinking everything he says is technically true, except no way he built a car like that by himself that can go 400 miles and an 8-hr charge of H2 made at home via solar electrolysis.

But what he says is apparently possible in theory, because you can buy a smaller prototype on Amazon.com (see below). I think it would be cool if the Prius with a solar roof could be used to conduct electrolsis and charge up these little hydride canniters (in Amazon example) and then you could use the H2 cannisters to do things like make heat the car before you get in, etc.

 

Solar->Hydrogen->Heat?

How wide can we swim before get drowned here?


Solar->Heat much more easy!

 

The least expensive solution is solar -> PV -> battery
But if you really want hydrogen for fcv this is not efficient
solar -> PV + electrolizer + pump -> 10,000 psi h2 + O2
Because the electrolzer is likely only 70% efficient and the fuel cell likely less than 60%, you end up needing at least 2.4x more solar panel area than in the first scenario.
The electrolizer step adds a great deal to the cost of this system, so yes we can do better with other solutions where catalysts are used with the light, you still need electricity to pump it up to 10,000+ psi or to liquify. Definitely if you can think that breakthroughs may come where other methods are less expensive. But here is where the mind goss a little limp. We are also researching solar + c02+algea + refinery (we need to add some stuff to make it a better fuel) -> biodiesel. If hydrogen costs as much as biodiesel to make, and we use the waste co2 from power plants to grow the algea, why pay for all the new hydrogen fueling stations? DOE is funding both kinds of research.

This is still much more expensive than pv + battery, but perhaps we will have breakthroughs.

An easier solution is to include more batteries and a plug on a fcv. Just 7 kwh of batteries instead of 1.3kwh would allow roughly 40% of miles to run on electricity for many users.

Toyota’s fuel-cell sedan offers alternative to big batteries - SFGate

Talk among yourselves. I'm surprised Toyota is still saying it will be much cheaper than a Tesla after the Japanese price was released. A decent reporter should definitely ask toyota about that, as well as when they see fuel cells as mass market vehicles. Is it in the 2030s, or is it sooner?

 

What's the pitfall with the hydride storage at low pressure?
I can see Horizon seems to use the hydride system in small cannisters but they go to pressure vessles in their FCV cars.

 

No one has cracked hydride storage for automotive (last for years, works in automotive temperature ranges). If they do, then the 10,000 psi fueling infrastructure is a waste, but it would be one breakthrough that got fuel cell cars closer to cost competitive with ice vehicles.

I looked up your horizon, and they seem to get close. Unfortunately they only say it goes down to -5 degrees C, which means if you drive out to go skiing in california or nevada, your car won't start. That would be fine for a range extender though, as the battery could keep the storage system warm enough to release hydrogen, but not for these fcv without a plug. I'm curious how the sytsem works in a multi-year test.

 

Than k You AG...I am thinking hydride maybe too expensive, but its not spelled out anywhere.
You can use Lithium Hydride or Lithium Deuteride, I get the impression the Deuteride is the one that works so well but cost may be through the roof not to mention heavy water needed to make it.

 

10,000 psi storage is expensive. Its likely if they get hydrides to work well, they can figure out how to make them less expensive. Fuel cell lobby likes to say the storage for 10,000 psi will go down, but it takes up a lot of volume in the car, and probably costs around $5000/vehicle today, and it makes refueling infrastructure more expensive as they need to safely fill these very high pressure tanks.