A common criticism of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is the amount of expensive platinum that is needed in fuel cells.
However, platinum use in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles has already decreased a lot and will get down to the same level as vehicles on the road today. Moreover, a lot of work is being done on platinum-free fuel cells.
Platinum is used in catalytic converters in vehicles today. Furthermore, the platinum from catalytic converters and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles can be recycled.
GM using much less platinum in fuel cells
Here is an excerpt from an Automobilemag.com article titled “GM Continues Progress on Hydrogen Fuel Cells” that was published on May 21st which includes a quote from Jon Bereisa who is Director of GM’s Fuel Cell Propulsion program:
“Bereisa told us some particulars about the Gen VI fuel cell, ‘Now we’ve got the size down to where it can fit into a compact car. It’s much smaller than what you just drove. Plus we’re using a lot less platinum in the fuel cell stack, so cost is down. But we’re able to deliver more range – around 300 miles – because we’ve got more cells in the stack.’”
Matt Fronk, former Director of the GM Fuel Cell Research Lab in Honeoye Falls, New York, wrote a guest essay that was published in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle on April 5th.
The title of the essay is “Area GM research into fuel cell development moving forward.” Matt Fronk discusses all of the progress that has been made with the GM hydrogen fuel cell program.
(Note: Unfortunately, the article is no longer up on the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle website.)
A person posted a comment on the article criticizing the cost of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Here is an excerpt from Matt Fronk’s response:
“One of the main reasons GM continues to work on FCs (fuel cells) is that we see a path to cost. Much of the cost today that people predict not falling is due to high levels of Pt (platinum). There are ways to push this way down and get to comparable levels as next generation automobiles.”
Platinum-free fuel cells
Moreover, fuel cells may eventually not contain any platinum.
Three examples of organizations working on platinum-free fuel cells include Wuhan University (China), Nisshinbo, and Monash University (Australia). Furthermore, the following CleanTechnica article that was published on August 23rd mentions that Full Cycle Energy, Oxford University, and Lilliputian are also working on platinum-free fuel cells.
I believe all of the car companies with strong hydrogen programs are almost certainly working on platinum-free fuel cells. However, they are all very secretive about their fuel cell R&D programs, so this information is not readily available to the general public.
For example, Toyota started their in-house hydrogen fuel cell vehicle program back in 1992. Furthermore, Toyota invests nearly $1 million PER HOUR on research and development of future technologies. I can only imagine the advancements Toyota has made on low-platinum and platinum-free hydrogen fuel cells.
The only quote I have of a car company acknowledging that they are working on platinum-free fuel cells is from Larry Burns who was the Vice President of R&D and Strategic Planning for GM. It is from an article that was published back in November 2006 in the Korea Herald.
Here is the excerpt from the article:
“GM is striving to minimize the requirement of the costly platinum used in its hydrogen fuel cell vehicle to cut production costs for commercialization.
‘The key is to spread platinum on the fuel cell membrane as evenly as possible via a catalyst-thrift technology to meet cost and durability targets,’ Burns said. ‘We are also investing in other materials that can replace platinum.’”
Conclusion
Due to the reasons mentioned above, the amount of platinum that is used in fuel cells is not expected to be a problem for hydrogen cars in the future.
[Photo credit: 91RS]
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Could someone explain to me the advantage of using hydrogen generated from natural gas over burning the natural gas directly. Once you take into account the energy lost in steam reformation, higher pressure storage and the fuel cell stack the overall efficiency is comparable, is it not? Isn’t a natural gas system much cheaper?
Sean,
Thanks for the comment. Great questions.
Here are some points in response:
1. Fuel cells are 2-3 times as efficient as internal combustion engines.
But I’m not sure about the overall efficiency of using natural gas directly in internal combustion engines versus producing hydrogen from natural gas and then using it in fuel cells.
While hydrogen is stored at higher pressures, a key point to keep in mind is that most of the energy required for compression is at the lower pressure levels. For example, it doesn’t take much more energy to compress hydrogen from 5000 psi to 10,000 psi. The most difficult part is getting it to 5000 psi in the first place.
The Honda Civic GX stores natural gas at 3600 psi.
http://automobiles.honda.com/images/2010/civic-gx/downloads/2010-civic-gx-factsheet.pdf
2. While internal combustion engines are less expensive than fuel cells now, I think fuel cells will be about the same in 2015 if they are mass produced. This is especially true as far as Toyota is concerned.
3. The driving range of the Honda Civic GX is “more than 220 miles” (see link below). However, as you can see in the Toyota YouTube video on the top of the blog, the Toyota FCHV-adv hydrogen fuel cell vehicle (which is a mid-size SUV) gets a real-world range of 431 miles.
http://corporate.honda.com/press/article.aspx?id=5007
The efficiency of the fuel cell really helps out with driving range.
4. Perhaps the biggest issue is that natural gas vehicles rely solely on natural gas. What will people do with natural gas vehicles when the price of natural gas eventually goes really high due to much higher demand?
On the other hand, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the U.S. could run on hydrogen produced from natural gas for a few years and then run on hydrogen produced from wind, solar, etc. once natural gas prices get too high.
A huge benefit of hydrogen is that it can be made from many different sources.
5. Since hydrogen fuel cell cars will be ready in 2015 which is not far away, it makes the most sense to change the energy infrastructure once (i.e. from gasoline to hydrogen).
6. While the U.S. appears to have a lot of natural gas, many countries are not in the same situation. For example, my guess is that Japan will likely make a lot of hydrogen from nuclear power.
Hydrogen will allow countries to achieve energy independence in many different ways.
Thank you for the information. I think we agree on most of the points.
1) Yes fuel cells are twice as efficient as modern gasoline engines.
“a key point to keep in mind is that most of the energy required for compression is at the lower pressure levels”
I think you have this backwards. The higher the pressure, the harder it is to push more gas into the tank. Think of pumping up a bike tire. It is easy at first, but gets harder as the pressure increases. If you take the same size tank and double the pressure it will hold twice as much gas and take 4 times as much energy to pressurize. I don’t know how much energy is lost in pressurization but I think it is significant at 10,000 psi.
2. We can all agree that fuel cells will come down in price significantly with mass production, though I don’t see how they come down to the price of an ICE given that they are more complex and have higher material costs.
3. Yes, larger tanks at higher pressures hold more energy, but the car will go further if its full of natural gas instead of hydrogen.
4. Good point. Hydrogen is more versatile than natural gas.
5. Agreed. It makes sense to only switch infrastructures once, especially with a fuel that has no significant existing infrastructure.
6. Agreed. Hydrogen has an advantage over natural gas in nations without good natural gas supplies.
When you tally it up I still don’t see a compelling reason to switch to hydrogen. When coming from Natural gas, its just an extra expensive and difficult way to burn natural gas and when coming from electricity, it just an extremely inefficient battery (although with good charge density). It has the advantage of the same car doing either, but in all cases there is a better alternative.
Regarding energy losses to compression…I think you’re both correct. Graphically the compression energy curves would look like an upside down Nike swoosh. While it takes more energy at higher pressure, incrementally it’s less than going from say ntp to 5000 psig.
The more relevant point though, is that because of the specific volumes of hydrogen and natural gas, it takes about 8 times more energy to compress hydrogen than natural gas to the same pressure. A good picture can be found at http://www.methanol.org/pdf/HydrogenEconomyReport2003.pdf (page 10).
Sean,
1. This is from “Twenty Hydrogen Myths” (top of page 20 in the link below) by Amory Lovins:
“And compression energy is logarithmic — it takes about the same amount of energy to compress from 10 to 100 bar as from 1 to 10 bar, so using a 700- instead of a 350-bar tank adds only ~1–2 percentage points to the energy consumption, raising the compression energy from ~9–12% to ~10–13%.”
http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E03-05_20HydrogenMyths.pdf
Sean/Kevin,
When all factors are considered (e.g. a ~220-mile range in a small Honda natural gas car versus a 431-mile range in a Toyota hydrogen mid-size SUV), the compression cost is a minor issue.
A kilogram of hydrogen contains about 39 kilowatt hours of electricity. Taking the compression numbers above, 12% of this figure is about 5 kilowatt hours. At 10 cents per kilowatt hour, this is $0.50 per kilogram. And the Toyota FCHV-adv hydrogen fuel cell vehicle gets 68.3 real-world miles per kilogram. Since fuel cells are 2-3 times more efficient, this is equivalent to adding around $0.20 per gallon of gasoline.
Assuming all of this is correct (this isn’t an issue I’ve spent a lot of time researching), I don’t think mainstream consumers would choose a natural gas vehicle just for this reason.
2. Here is an article on the cost of fuel cells:
http://www.h2carblog.com/?p=215
3. Remember, fuel cells are far more efficient than internal combustion engines which helps increase the range a lot. I don’t know why the Honda natural gas vehicle would only have a range of ~220 miles if it could be a lot higher without compromising trunk and passenger space. With a limited number of fueling stations, it would make sense to increase the range as much as possible.
A couple of other points:
Hydrogen from natural gas via steam reforming is a very mature technology and quite inexpensive.
http://www.h2carblog.com/?p=461
If natural gas vehicles are the way to go, why have the car companies spent billions on hydrogen fuel cell technology? And why haven’t all of the car companies come together to back natural gas vehicles?
On the other hand, eight car companies recently signed a joint letter of understanding asking for the initial hydrogen fueling infrastructure to be built by 2015.
You can view a copy of the letter at the following link.
http://www.h2carblog.com/?p=130
1. My mistake. Thank you for providing a number on the energy lost in comprtession (12%)
2. Yes fuel cell costs will come down significantly, but you should always take PR statements with a grain of salt, especialy when they talking about multiple years in the future.
3. If you put more fuel in a vehicle it can go further. It is not suprising that a vehicle with much larger tanks at 3 times the preassure has greater range. The fact remains that in any fair comparison (similar preasure, similar size) a natural gas car will have significantly greater range than a hydrogen fuel cell car. Natural gas has a much greater energy density (per volume, 4 or 5 tims that of hydrogen). Assuiming the fuel cell is tice as efficient the natural gas vehicl;e will still go twice as far.
You ask why honda did not simply put in a higher preassure tank: 1) Safty, 2) Cost
Its not fair to compare a million+ dollar prototype to a $25k production car.
I’m not saying that natural gas is the long term answer. I think BEVs are the long term answer due to their high efficiency and the exponential decay of battery prices. In the short term I think weight reduction and aerodynamics are going to be important along with CNG and PHEVs.
Sean,
We will obviously just have to agree to disagree on some issues.
But one final point I want to make is that there is a difference between a Tesla statement, a GM statement, and a Toyota statement. Toyota backs up what is says. Unlike others, they usually under promise and over deliver.
It will be fun to see what happens in 2015.
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