Passenger cars with fuel cells

Life-cycle comparison of conventional passenger car and passenger car with fuel cells... 

The scenarios introduced passenger cars with fuel cell technology on the European market from 2015 with a market share growing to 43 percent in 2050. Two different scenarios with respect to feedstock for hydrogen production were created. One scenario assumed that the hydrogen was produced on the basis of natural gas, whereas the other scenario assumed that it was produced by electrolysis from renewable or nuclear energy. 

Fig. 13.3 Costs of hydrogen at the filling station, expanded from [19]. Values are based on the data in Table 13.1 for natural gas reforming, wind power electrolysis, and biomass gasificatirai with the addition of infrastructure costs taken from [7] (shaded areas) supplementary data from [5, 7, 13, 15, 16, 20] (see symbols in figure) for further explanations, see text. Note Since the fuel consumption (MJ/lOO km) of passenger cars with fuel cells is better by a factor of 2 than that of cars with internal combustion engines, the pathways considered here with FCVs meant that competitive costs were derived per kilometer driven...

The technical overview of passenger cars with fuel cells is presented in Table 36.5. 7dl of the fuel ceU passenger cars presented here use a PEMFC, as high power density is needed for this application. The fuel ceU power is between 63 and 100 kW. The energy storage system is usually a lithium ion battery or an NiMH battery. A supercapacitor is only used once. Information about the hybridization concept is not provided in the literature. The hybridization degree, if it can be calculated, is between 0.17 and 0.30. For values lower than 0.50, the fuel cell delivers the majority of the traction power, for instance, during acceleration. 

As expected, major environmental indicators are affected positively by the introduction of hydrogen cars. Demand for gasoline drops by more than 13% until 2030, compared with BAU, and demand for diesel by about 2%. The difference is significant, as in this scenario only passenger cars are equipped with fuel cells and H2-ICE engines, but neither buses nor light-duty vehicles are expected to be equipped with fuel cells. This means only a small share of diesel fuel consumers is affected, i.e., diesel cars, while buses, light- and heavy-duty vehicles (LDV, HDV) continue to run on diesel. 

Even these ideas (which have been in the open literature since 1993) did not tempt U.S. automotive makers to switch to fuel cells as the power source for electric cars. The lead was finally taken by Daimler-Benz, in Germany, the first manufacturers of passenger automobiles with internal combustion engines in the world. In 1996 this company demonstrated fuel cell-driven passenger cars with methanol as the originating liquid to be taken on board and re-formed to hydrogen. This fuel is then used in fuel cells to power the cars electric motors.14... 

To study the possible contribution to GHG emission reduction from the introduction of passenger cars with hydrogen and fuel cell technology... 

Fig. 8.15 (A) Schematic of concept car NECAR 4 representing a fuel cell vehicle with a PEM system operated with liquid H2, ([22]) (B) Passenger car with hybrid fuel cell and super capacitor power train [28],...

DaimlerChrysler renewed its interest in liquid hydrogen, and that was the fuel in NECARIV that appeared in 1999. NECARIV was among the first drivable, zero-emission, fuel cell cars in the United States along with the Ford and GM fuel cell prototypes. It was a major advance over NECAR III, whose cell and reformer took up all the passenger space. NECAR IV was still heavy and slower to accelerate than Ford s P2000 fuel cell car, but it had room for five, with a 40% power increase over the earlier version, a higher top speed of 90 miles per hour and a range of 280 miles. 

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. 

However, it has to be noted that, from the perspective of providing mobility, by using that natural gas as feedstock -and taking into account fuel production and vehicle conversion efficiencies - the majority of passenger cars can be fuelled with the production of liquid fuels from oil sands, followed (with about a factor of three less) by its conversion into hydrogen and subsequent use in fuel-cell vehicles, and its direct use in CNG vehicles. 

The beginning of the possible market introduction of hydrogen passenger cars in the most optimistic scenarios is around 2015, which is also in line with the implementation plan of the European Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Platform (HFP, 2007). The Reference scenario features high policy support, fast learning, concentrated users, early network and no country-specific bounds. 

Development for stationary applications is aimed at different specifications, but the materials development mainly coincides with that for transport applications. The operating life time for stationary fuel cells is, however, much longer than for use in cars, 40000 h or more versus 5000 h for passenger cars. Fuel cells in cars, though, will experience more voltage cycling as well as start-stop cycles. 

In the early 1970s, K. Kordesch modified a 1961 Austin A-40 two-door, four-passenger sedan to an air-hydrogen fuel cell attery hybrid car (23). This vehicle used a 6-kW alkaline fuel cell in conjunction with lead acid batteries, and operated on hydrogen carried in compressed gas cylinders mounted on the roof The car was operated on public roads for three years and about 21,000 km. 

California has started a Fuel Cell Partnership with oil companies, automakers and fuel cell companies. They hope to have 50 fuel cell vehicles, both passenger cars and transit buses, on the... 

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