I would favor dual fuel (flex fuel/natural gas) cars in the U.S. The Phill NG compressor would go in the garage and provide CNG for local trips and commutes. The flex fuel (gasoline, methanol, ethanol) could be use for long trips where gasoline stations are on the road. You get cleaner air and less foreign oil. Sure NG supplies are getting tighter, but if we use the NG that Canada will use to process the tar sands, we might have enough. If not, gasify biomass to SNG and go CO2 neutral. I would not favor LNG tankers however.

So, Andy, you think crude oil is inefficient?  You're right, but you forget that we get crude oil out of the ground for what used to be very little effort.  On the other hand, we have to make every bit of hydrogen we get.  In a gasoline car, the biggest inefficiences are at the end; with hydrogen, they're at the very beginning.

The cheap, long-lived battery isn't here yet... but it's coming.  We've already got long-lived, very light and extremely powerful Li-ion cells from the likes of A123Systems.  They cost a lot today, but individual transistors once did too.  There is nothing inherently expensive about lithium iron phosphate, and the price will eventually come down to a small multiple of the raw-material cost.  On the other hand, low-temperature hydrogen fuel cells inherently need precious-metal catalysts.  Good luck with that.

I was at the auto parts store the other day and saw a 105 AH 12 V deep-cycle battery for $71.  That's about $56/kWh.  Firefly Energy's carbon-backed electrode design should take out 2/3 of the lead while eliminating several of the failure modes, and ought to yield that 5-year lifespan.  If they cost $100/kWh, a 25 kWh battery would cost $2500 and cost about $500/year in depreciation and maybe $350/year in interest at 14%.  If you drove 15,000 miles/year at 250 Wh/mile and 10¢/kWh, electricity would cost you $375/year for a total cost of $1225; you'd have to get about 37 MPG on $3/gallon gasoline to beat that, and 61 MPG at $5/gallon.  Any fees the electric company pays you for V2G services would make the EV even more attractive.

Hydrogen is an inefficient, hyper-expensive dead end.  In contrast the replacement of the gasoline engine by batteries is overdue, blocked by skulduggery and inertia.

Engineer-Poet you are right on the money, and Andy I still don't see how you can justify the nightmare of using H2 to fuel an ICE vehicle, and even add to the nightmare by having dual fuel. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to just accept the inevitable, the full EV drivetrain, run the vehicle as a series hybrid in the short term, with a low % utilization 5 kwh NiMH battery pack, worth $1100 in volume, basically 4 times a Prius battery pack, which have been good for > 1 million km’s. And then for a generator use a high efficiency Methanol fueled engine, which can be run at 40-43% efficiency consistently, with near zero emissions, except CO2 and methanol can easily be made carbon neutral. With the handicap of dual fuel and without the EV drivetrain, you’ll be lucky to average 18% efficiency with your ICE dual fuel engine, and knock off another 15-30% of that for drivetrain losses. When you can store, produce & distribute the methanol or ethanol fuel so easily, it is simply wacky to create this foolish burden of compressed gas for fuel.

Also it doesn’t matter what fancy bookkeeping trickery you use, the fact is your H2 is coming from Grid Mix, and that means it is not CO2 neutral, and will, in most countries, produce much more CO2 than the above mentioned series hybrid running on Natural Gas Methanol. The by far most likely scenario for CO2 neutral electricity to vehicle is homeowners who install solar panels or windmills and easily charge their BEV’s or PHEV’s from them. I doubt you would find many willing to invest in a solar powered home H2 filling station, with computer hookup to fuel tank (required by safety regulations).

Regarding the Tesla battery pack, using the 18650 Li-Ion cells, rumor is Tesla is linked up with EEStor, true or not, Tesla will switch to larger automotive sized cells when demand makes them available. If only the money blown on H2 had been spent on batteries.

The Toyota Prius is about $5000 cheaper than a VW Golf TDI diesel in the U.S. Using UC Davis calculated volume cost of NiMH batteries of $220 per kwh, that would be $6,600 for a RAV4 BEV sized battery pack. Take out the 76 hp Atkinson engine, the exhaust & emission controls system, the complex Synergy drivetrain, fuel system, evaporative canister & control, ignition system and a few other components. Replace the two electric motors (67 hp) with one 80 hp electric motor, beef up the PEM a bit, simpler control system, and it’s a pretty good bet that you can make a Toyota Prius BEV for about the same price as a regular Toyota Prius, and about $5000 less than a VW Golf diesel, with much better energy economy and zero emissions as well as being very trendy. And RAV4 BEV’s are running 150,000 miles on the original old technology battery packs, with resale values of as much as double the original purchase price for a 4 year old vehicle. Tom Gage at AC propulsion has said he could make the Prius as a BEV for +/- $1000 of current price. And in addition you have the option of selling the vehicle as a series hybrid or plugin series hybrid with similar components across all models – talk about scale economy advantages.

Maybe you haven't heard but Miles Automotive is selling a 85 mph, 150 mile range, street legal vehicle (the Javlon) in the U.S. for ~$29,000, powered by Li-Ion batteries, in < 2 years See:

http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1228

Certainly much cheaper to run than a VW TDI diesel and cost about the same. In 5 years battery replacement maybe $10,000 (likely much cheaper by then) but maintenance costs almost nil, and drivetrain should be good for > 500,000 miles. And this done, like the Tesla, with zero government funding, unlike your 10’s of $billions in H2 funding.

Fact is every part of the h2 system is getting far better and cheaprt and better.

The end result is h2 is improving faster then ex[ected will improve more then hoped. And will do more then they ever planned sooner then anyone expected.

At the current rate h2 sports and lux and enertainment cars are a lock for 2012-15 timeframe.
IF they manage the improvements they plan to by 2020 eveb normal midrange.. 20-35k cars wi;; be able to addordably run on a combo of hort hop ev and long h2.

Before 2012 they should be managing UNDER 50 kwh per kilo of compressed h2. That should result in h2 at 3-4 bucks a kilo.
By 2012 they should have long finished cost reducing and mass producing the simple 10k psi tanks... amd nothey dont weigh as much as the old 2.5k steel tanks...

By 2012 they will have "cheap" fuel cells capable of range extender duties..

And yes they will have the xars and fillimg stations.

The only question is how nuch these titans will invest to start phase 1 and thus how many early fuel cell cars and h2 ice cars will pop up by the goal. 1000? 10000? 50000? I doubt they will goall that high till phase 2 or 3.

Let's see.  A kilogram of H2 is about 41 kWh (higher heating value) and yields about 24.6 kWh in a 60% efficient PEMFC.  $3/kg assumes energy available at < 6¢/kWh; try 10¢/kWh, so $5/kg electricity cost and 20.3¢/kWh at the FC output terminals.  This yields about 5¢/mile electricity cost into the motor controller.  (This does not include any of the expenses of the electrolyzer or compressor, so it is a serious underestimate.)

Li-ion batteries are about 95% efficient, so the cost of juice is about 10.5¢/kWh.  Further, batteries require no expense for brand-new infrastructure (which would be on the order of $1 trillion for H2).

Conclusion:  Hydrogen is a boondoggle compared to the cheaper and more efficient technology, batteries.

Wintermane, whatever you're smoking may be pleasant, but it is seriously warping your sense of reality.

H2 and fuel cells are making great progress. But that doesn't mean fuel cell cars will soon be available.

Honda thinks they will be mass marketing fuel cell vehicles in 2018. And even then at $84,000 in USD. (I have to assume that is current dollars.)

What Honda says isn't Gospel but their record is good.

If we want results now they must come from improving what we have - the ICE, hybrids and EVs, plugins, better batteries, and multiple small improvements in weight, tires, accessory loads, transmission, and fuels.

Each FCV fuel cell stack requires 100 grammes of platinum.

If 30% of entire global platinum production goes to FCVs, that means that less than 1% of global vehicle production can be hydrogen FCV based. End of discussion.

Unless somebody has a plan on how to turn base metals into platinum....

They already have designs that dont use platinum or that use vastly less of it. In the mid run as long as they reduce the plat use enough they dont have to worry. By the time phase 3 comes along they will have replaced the platinum entirely and sti;; wont be in realy massive production yet.

Wintermane, you must have the sense to realize that the only reason Hydrogen gets so much press, hype and money is because the Oil Lobby and their Big Auto cohorts are pushing it. This is for three reasons:

1) Greenwashing: it gives them an extraordinarily well advertised opportunity to pretend that they are pro-environment, whereas in actual fact they are undermining green technology at every step

2) The expense & infeasibility of the H2 economy. They know damn well that H2 is the lowest threat to their energy dominance and they will be able to sell high priced oil to us until completely depleted because the H2 fantasy is so far in the future and so expensive they have no worry about it interfering with their energy hegemony.

3) By hyping the H2 economy they are very successfully drying up funding for realistic technologies, like methanol, thorium reactors, electric drive vehicles, and biomass to ethanol via Fischer Tropsch process.

Wintermane, these people are pure, insidious EVIL. Go watch the movie Syriana to see a clear picture of their true color. No wonder George Clooney is funding Phoenix Motors. These are the good folks that had their political cronies start the Iraq War in order to profit from Iraqi Oil, a $trillion of potential green energy funding up in smoke as well as 1000's of American lives, and likely one million Iraqi lives. These are also the guys who had their politician puppets overthrow the legitimate Iran government, thus precipitating the terrible Iran nuclear theocracy nutcases.

How does that make you feel, that by supporting their Hydrogen Economy, you are a partner with the demons who are wreaking such destruction on this Earth?

Um... no.

The reason h2 got soo much backing was even if it never worked in cars the backers got alot out of it.

1 big oil ALSO oddly is big h2. They use more h2 then anyone else. The military wants fuel cell to power energy weapons on tanks hummeers and even soldiers. Many companies use h2 today. Many others make it... h2 was already a billion buck industry waaay back when bush first pushed it. Car makes VERY obviously WANT h2 for certain cars/trucks... they pushed for it. Thre coa industry pushed for it and so did the power and gas companies.. Hell likely even the propane industry pushed for it.

And it has a sensable obvious set of uses EVEN before its cheap enough for the masses it can STILL be a 100 billion a year ind.

as for the iraq war. We didnt fight it for oil as the oil was already being sold to SOMEONE and thats all that ever mattered. The war started as ofyen they do becuase it was the last year we could have done it and we couldnt afford the risks of not doing it.
Oh and there was the ;iyyrt deal of iraq printing 16 billion in perfect funny money a year.. and who saddam was flimging alot of it to... need a hint?

Personaly I think bush should have let saddam go mental and stayed out. Would have resultrd in ALOT more deaths on all sides and alot more money spend and cities wrecked.. but it would have beeb much better for bush and the gop.

"They already have designs that dont use platinum or that use vastly less of it."

There are alternative catalyst materials, but these have dreadful efficiency conversion rates. Molten oxide fuel cells are also too impractical for vehicles. And as for reduction of platinum use, this research has been ongoing for decades and nobody has yet been able to show a decent vehicle sized fuel-cell using a small amount of platinum.

I do believe you're conflating solid-oxide fuel cells and molten-carbonate fuel cells.

SOFC's are headed for vehicular use, but in the ~5 kW power range.  At ~$250/kW they'll cost too much for primary power, but as APU's and stationary cogenerators (for turning heating fuel into charging power for EV's and PHEV's) they'll be able to make a big difference.

The SOFC are still running $3000/kw and realistic projections are for $500/kw. $250/kw is the equivalent of predicting Li-Ion batteries for $100/kwh, which is possible but very dubious at the moment.

It is also dubious that the high temperature fuel cells will have much application in vehicles, except perhaps as a portable charging unit. Definetely the future of SOFC's is for home CHP, fed by Natural Gas mostly.

Wintermane, there is zero doubt by anyone with any integrity whatsoever that the Iraq War was about oil. Partly to prevent from Sadam from selling his oil in quantity after the sanctions were removed (which was soon to happen as no WMD's were found except in your buddies Cheney & Bush's imagination), which of course would have pushed the Oil price down to like $30/barrell instead post invasion price of >$60/barrell. The documentation is well established that Big Oil were involved in the Iraq invasion plans long before it occurred and have obtained production-sharing agreements to clinch their control of Iraqi Oil. For good articles on how the Bush/Cheney Oil Administration are doing it, see:

http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-button150206.htm
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2006/0714confidential.htm

A quote from the article: “According to Crude Designs, production-sharing agreements are ‘beyond the reach of Iraqi courts, public scrutiny or democratic control.’ Because they are ‘subject to commercial confidentiality provisions, PSAs are effectively immune from public scrutiny and lock governments into economic terms that cannot be altered for decades.”

Now that we know you are pro $trillion Iraq War, for no reason that I can gather whatsoever from your convoluted logic, I fully understand why you are pro hydrogen economy, pro hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, more $trillions to throw away foolishly.

Well ounce you know the forces behind fuel cells h2 and h2 ice you know its a sure bet and a bloody profitable one at that.
The military nrrds fuel cells to power energy weapons. Thats why costly high power sracks were made.
They want a hummer mounted lazer cannon of 250 kw... so they make 250kw plus stacks.. They want man portable fannypack stacks for energy rifles and powered combat duitd...
And they want 1.5 and up mw stacks to cram into tanks.

Car makers simply are covering all bets in case thier cash cows cant be gimmicked out of cafe hell any other way. An h2 ice or fuel cell suv or heavy truck or lux car or high perf sports car makes alot of sense as none of the owners care about fuel costs and the cars already are very high cost.
Some places h2 will rock simply brcuase NOTHING else will work fully there. Also some places elrctric rates are very low. While fuel cells might not creep in everywhere the new high eff h2 ice engines might.. specialy an engibe optimized for bth h2 ice and ng...

Sorry, Warren, but you appear to be out of date on SOFC costs.  The estimated SOFC stack cost has already fallen as low as $254/kW.

Engineer-Poet, I've heard those estimates, and I've also heard EEStor are going to sell their 52 kwh array for $3,200 or $60 per kwh. And I've also heard 5 year projections of Li-Ion for $120 per kwh. I expect all of the above are over optimistic, but I sure hope they are on target. We also heard projections by Ovonics Chairman that they were on target to produce NiMH for $150 per kwh, that was way back in 1998, and we all know what happened to that one.

I find it hard to believe you will find SOFC's at anywhere near $250/kw, since 1kw decent quality stationary PEMFC's are selling at about $50,000 each. And SOFC's require a temperature of 800-1000 degC, now even a basic mass produced Self Cleaning Oven, just a box with elements and a simple-minded control runs at only 450 degC and they run $600-$800. If this was really true I would expect that PEMFC's would be one hell of a hard sell right now.

I will believe $120/kwh Li-Ion & $60/kwh ultracapacitors long before I will believe SOFC's at $250 per kwh.

I find it hard to believe you will find SOFC's at anywhere near $250/kw

since 1kw decent quality stationary PEMFC's are selling at about $50,000 each.

After expensive compounds are eliminated, automated production is the key.  The prototype of a new car can cost a million dollars or more, and sell in production for around 1% of that.  The difference is in the amount of labor per unit.

And SOFC's require a temperature of 800-1000 degC

You really are behind the times.  The major development was to make the electrolyte into a very thin layer of YSZ or the like.  This increased the ion mobility, allowing a much lower operating temperature.  Lower temperatures allowed the use of metal backings instead of solid ceramic construction.  The effects cascade through the system, allowing more rugged cells to be made for less money with automated equipment.

“Why would you expect the price structure of a mass-produced plasma-sprayed ceramic coating over metal, with nickel compounds on both sides, to resemble that of a device full of precious metals... which is currently built by hand?”

The argument is that what kind of fool would pay $50,000 for a 1 kw H2 fueled stationary PEM fuel cell system when a $250 natural gas fed SOFC system is “just around the corner”

“…automated production is the key…”

I’m well aware of the great cost reductions due to automation, and its an argument we EV fans, use constantly mostly on the deaf ears of the “brain dead” EV critics. If and when large format Li-Ion or NiMH batteries and other EV components are produced in Automotive Volumes, prices should drop precipitously, and I could see $120/kwh Li-Ion batteries, but this may be awhile yet. Similarly, it may be that at some point well in the future SOFC’s will be available at $250/kw, which is about the cost of a home furnace, but the question is when? I’m all for it – I want one right now.

There of course is the chicken & egg problem, and getting manufacturers interested which requires government & insurance company & utilities co-operation for building regulations & insurance and construction companies to participate in making buildings designed to accommodate CHP, and all this time their will be Vested Interests opposing this disruptive technology.

In the meantime, keep me posted on where I can buy one for a reasonable cost – I haven’t seen ANY for sale at Fuel Cell Stores so far.

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Since DME has an advantage of decomposition at lower temperature than methane and LPG, R&D for hydrogen source for fuel cell has been carried out.

If you would like to know more on the latest DME developments, join us at upcoming North Asia DME / Methanol conference in Beijing, 27-28 June 2007, St Regis Hotel. The conference covers key areas which include:

DME productivity can be much higher especially if
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By:
National Development Reform Commission NDRC
Ministry of Energy for Mongolia

Production of DME/ Methanol through biomass
gasification could potentially be commercialized
By:
Shandong University completed Pilot plant in Jinan and
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Advances in conversion technologies are readily
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Available project finance supports the investments
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