Graphene and quantum dots have implications for fuel cell technology

Certainly good news for fuel cells BUT supplying hydrogen remains a hard problem. There are many, readily available sources for hydrogen such as methanol and ammonia. Come up with a portable, efficient, hydrogen generator for these fuels and the problem is solved. But dealing with raw hydrogen in bulk above 20K is impractical.

Bob Wilson

 

Nice this is one of the breakthroughs needed to make fuel cells viable. I hope it makes it out of the lab.

On the second part current fuel cells cost considerably more than $55/kw. That kind of estimate is with manufacturing breakthroughs that the doe thinks will happen if we get to production of 500,000/year. The big players are talking about at most production of 5000 in a batch that lasts more than a year. Materials reaserch may drastically cut how complicated manufacturing is though. Cost estimates for toyota for hydrogen storage and fuel cell are $440/kw, for hyrunai $1300/kw. Don't let people fool you with that massive production quantity discount.

Toyota, Honda, and Mercedes had all demonstrated practical on board methanol reformers in running fcv by 2001. These had about an efficiency of 80%. The problem is theses things have to warm up to around 200 C to work, giving a time delay to start. Add a bigger lithium battery, say a 4 kwh one and a plug, and you probably get around the short comings, as you have enough electricity to heat it up fast, and a bigger buffer for fc + reformer energy production. The problem though is this bigger battery + reformer probably costs more than the hydrogen tanks and the mirai is already $57,000. You need to drop the cost of the fuel cell for this to be practical, but perhaps this technology can not only make pem fuel cells cheaper but also methane reformers cheaper with catalysts that run at lower temperatures.

This quote from the article makes me think this material could be used to make methane refomers work at lower temperatures.

Now the lobby really wants to claim no carbon dioxide out of the tailpipe. That may be the biggest problem with using methanol, but renewable methanol made from biomas is probably less expensive per unit energy than renewable hydrogen, something the lobby has not admitted yet either.

 

Would that help further enhance the market for biomass? With a better market for biomass we could make thinning our overgrown forests more cost effective.

 

I've long been thinking the fuel cell cars are the answer to replacing the ICE. Now I'm thinking that graphene based battery systems might be more practical. The big problem for me with current EV technology is the charge time. With graphene batteries the promise is 500 mile range with 15 minute recharge times. If that comes true why bother with hydrogen at all.

 

Careful . . . . the fuel cell lobby will be sending you a message shortly;


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