Hydrogen Fuel cell vehicle

Moore, R. M. Gottesfeld, S. and Zelenay, P. (1999). A Comparison Between Direct-Methanol and Direct Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles. SAE Future Transportation Technologies Conference. Paper 99FTT-48 (August). 

Jacobson MZ, Colella WG, Golden DM. 2005. Cleaning the air and improving health with hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. Science 308 1901-1905. 

In order for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to reduce global warming gases, the electrolysis process will need to become more efficient, and the electric power will need to be produced from a higher percentage of low-to zero-carbon sources (renewables or coal with carbon capture and storage). 

Fuel cell vehicles are viewed as one of the best long term options. A hydrogen fuel cell vehicle has advantages over alternatives, such as hybrid vehicles which combine IC engines with electrochemical batteries and still require petrochemical fuels that exhaust carbon dioxide and pollutants. 

GM has pledged to develop a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that would compete with conventional cars in volume by 2010. The company has 1,000 people working on the project in government, university and private labs in 14 countries. It has spent over 1 billion on the project since 1996. Daim-lerChrysler has also spent a billion on hydrogen fueled technology. 

Methanol may serve as a bridge to direct hydrogen, but more hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are appearing. Rapid advances in direct-hydrogen storage and production could push any liquid fuel out. 

The timetables announced by government and industry have generally been proven too conservative. Many auto companies already have running drivable fuel cell prototypes and it appears likely that some moderate commercialization will be achieved in the next decade. Hybrids are already here and proving to be popular because of their efficiency. They are providing valuable data on the type of electric drives that would be used in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. 

By 2010, Tier 2 standards should further reduce vehicle emissions by extending regulations to larger SUVs and passenger vans. The use of gasoline with a lower sulfur content will also reduce emissions and it also makes it easier to build cars that can achieve further reductions. These standards should allow new U.S. cars to be extremely free of air pollutants. But, the Clean Air Act does not cover vehicle C02 emissions. Many new cars are called near zero emissions by their manufacturers and may have tailpipe emissions cleaner than some urban air. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will have almost no emissions besides some water vapor and would be much cleaner. 

Still, the efficiency of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles is about twice that of current internal combustion engines on the highway, and about three times as high in urban traffic (and between 1-1.5 times more than hybrid electric vehicles (IEA, 2005)). A clear advantage of fuel cells is that at part loads, fuel-cell drives have a higher... 

Under the assumption that CCS will be widely applied from 2025 on, a remarkable reduction of C02 emissions could be achieved in the transport sector by hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles over the next few decades, even if hydrogen was produced mainly on the basis of fossil fuels. In the case of a predominantly coal-based production mix without CCS, C02 emissions from hydrogen production will exceed those saved through its use in the transport sector. If around 50% of total hydrogen production was to depend on CCS from coal gasification, the total C02 volumes to be stored in... 

Figure 15.1. Projected natural gas use in the United States by sector (USDOE, 2007a), and projected demand for natural gas to make hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles until 2030 (based on extension of USDOE s most aggressive scenario for introducing hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (Gronich, 2006)).

Table 15.5 lists our cost and performance assumptions for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (FCVs) and a gasoline internal combustion engine reference vehicle. FCV... 

To estimate the overall transition cost, the STM tracks the incremental costs of the hydrogen and fuel-cell vehicles sold in the market relative to the same number of gasoline vehicles. Two components of this transition cost are estimated over time. First is the incremental price of buying hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles each year,... 

Figure 15.13. Cash flows for introduction of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. Positive cash-flow values indicate that the cost of H2 vehicles and/or fuel is lower than the cost of gasoline vehicles or fuel.

Melendez, M. (2007). Geographically Based Hydrogen Demand Infrastructure Rollout Scenario Analysis. Presented at the 2010-2025 Scenario Analysis for Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles and Infrastructure, January 31, 2007, Washington, DC. wwwl.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/analysis/pdfs/ scenario analysis melendezl 07.pdf. 

Local air emissions, responsible for particulate matter, ozone and acid rain, as well as noise, could be significantly reduced by the introduction of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. Emissions of NOx, S02 and particulates can be reduced by 70% to 80% compared to a case without hydrogen. Especially in densely populated areas this is one major benefit of hydrogen, which is often underestimated. As there are a growing... 

As for the competition between hydrogen and electricity from renewable energies in the transport sector, it is clear that the use of renewable electricity in battery-electric vehicles is by far the most efficient application and yields a much higher C02 reduction than hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, owing to the high discharge rate of... 

When CCS is practiced in association with central production it also contributes in a very significant way to CO2 reduction from the transport sector. This clean hydrogen could have well-to-wheel emissions of 2.5-kg C02 per kg H2, a level at which the transport-sector emissions would be reduced by 85%, when hydrogen fuel cell vehicles replace hybrid ICE vehicles. We have shown that this emission level can be achieved both for gaseous and liquid distribution of hydrogen, and that the total costs for both distribution modes are similar, offering the possibility to adapt flexibly to local retail preferences and industrial opportunities. 

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