Buy a Natural Gas GX, Get Phill Free
19 October 2005
Honda is offering customers in Southern California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) who purchase a Honda natural gas-powered Civic GX (earlier post) the Phill home refueling appliance (earlier post) at no additional cost for 48 months without any additional commitment at the end of the term.
As part of the incentive, the SCAQMD and the Mobile Source Reduction Air Pollution Reduction Review Committee are offering incentives equaling $2,000 and Honda will cover the remaining balance of the Phill lease. Additionally, for those same qualified customers, Honda will offer installation financing of up to $1,500.
After seven years of successfully marketing the Civic GX strictly to fleet operators who have the convenience of dedicated fueling stations, the Civic GX-Phill package is now available to southern California consumers who live within the boundaries of the SCAQMD.
FuelMaker developed Phill, the world’s first low-cost, home-based refueling appliance that can be mounted to a garage wall either indoors or outdoors, to allow natural gas powered vehicles to be refueled overnight directly from a homeowner’s existing natural gas supply line. Phill provides GX drivers enough fuel for approximately 100 miles of driving on an eight hour refueling cycle.
The GX has a fully-fueled range of between 200 and 220 miles.
Phill is designed to offer ease of operation with simple start and stop buttons and will automatically turn itself off when the tank is full. Phil also has numerous safeguards throughout its system. Like any natural gas appliance, a FuelMaker trained installer must install Phill. The appliance can be leased to consumers through Honda dealers.
What is the well to wheel CO2 comparison between Phill and fuel cell. A fairly ooooobvius question - the answer would point the way to future technology. If hydrogen gives out more CO2, forget that, run vehicles on CNG.
Posted by: John Baldwin | 19 October 2005 at 11:17 AM
Here's something I posted earlier after reading the article about Honda's next gen FCX. It's appropriate because it deals with hydrogen generation w/o CO2 production, home refueling, and refueling infrastructure.
OK, I have to admit I didn't read all of the posts; most but not all. So I may be repeating what some other brilliant mind already knows and has posted.
First, concerning fuel cells. Not all fuel cells use platinum. Akaline fuel cells do not. If you're interested you may go to www.astris.ca to check out a company that has decided to follow NASA's example.
Second, there is a company that builds hydrogen powered ICE generators. Their website is: www.hydrogenenginecenter.com
Third. A company located @ www.fuelmaker.com has a home refueling appliance called Phill. It hangs on a garage wall that can refuel a pressure tank overnight. In this case it uses natural gas. You'll notice the car in the garage is a Honda. (Honda owns a part of Fuel Maker Corp.)
Last, and I did save the best for last. The "manufacture" of hydrogen can be cheap and non-polluting. A Canadian company called Alternate Energy (www.cleanwatts.com) has the solution to providing hydrogen without the use of electricity or natural gas. When you go to the website click on "Watch Hydrogen Unit Demo Video" and you will see. (That is, your eyes will be opened) Also, there is another website @ www.spiritofmaat.com/archive/watercar/h2ocar2.htm that also demonstrates that hydrogen can be released from water without electrcity. I don't know for sure but it appears that the demo on the spirit of maat website is the same process as the one at cleanwatts.com.
In summary, if you take the process developed by AEC and combine it with Fuel Maker's Phill then home refueling of fuel cell cars is possible and affordable. Beyond that, these two companies could do the same for gas stations across the nation at a reasonable cost. Since it is infrastructure costs that I believe is retarding the implementation of the hydrogen economy/highway just getting past this stumbling block will quicken the pace towards a final design - Whatever form that may take ie. Honda, Toyota, GM, etc.
However, pressurizing a tank in my opinion is not the way to go. Since AEC can generate hydrogen at will w/o the need for a power source and has demonstrated that the purity of the hydrogen is good enough to run a fuel cell (albeit a small one - Astris energy's golf cart) I contend that the solution is a small tank of water (insulated from freezing temp.)onboard in a closed system that provides the hydrogen from water in the tank and then captures the water after the two gases are combined in the fuel cell to return to the tank. If this is possible many of the problems associated with fuel cell cars disappears.
Posted by: Hellpilot | 20 October 2005 at 02:46 PM
Given that autoreforming is generally about 50 % efficient. It takes 17.5 MJ/kg of electricity (12.3 % of heating value) to compress hydrogen to 400 bar through adiabatic compression. If we accept that fuel cells are 40 % efficient then the well-to-wheel efficiency (ignoring some steps) is
0.5 * 0.88 * 0.4 = 0.176
In comparison compressing CH4 to 400 bar requires about 2.5 MJ/kg (4.5 % heating value of methane). If we run it through a 25 % efficient engine engine the efficiency will be 0.95 * 0.25 = 0.2375.
Of course electric cars can out perform both systems regardless of the fuel source (coal, gas, renewables, whatever) because you can start running combined cycles and the like to improve the efficiency of your heat engine.
Now if you -- like Hellpilot -- want to burn aluminium to produce hydrogen the numbers will look much worse. Producing aluminium is very expensive from an energy point of view.
Posted by: Robert McLeod | 22 October 2005 at 09:20 AM
send info on nat, gas. for cars. where can i get a conversion kit for cars
Posted by: bud maland | 16 December 2006 at 09:38 AM
Posted by: Nbkvqxz | 02 June 2007 at 07:38 PM