We have covered how a hydrogen fuel cell works previously at Ask A Scientist, but where could they be used? An area that could potentially benefit from using fuel cells is the transport industry.
Climate Change
According to the Department for Energy and Climate Change, the UK emitted 549.3 million tons of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2011, with 122.2 MtCO2e being down to the transport industry. Cars, taxis and busses accounted for 74% of this figure, which is a substantial contribution. Fossil fuel burning cars release harmful emissions from the exhaust when in use. On a local scale, these harmful gases and particles can damage people’s health, and on a larger scale they contribute to climate change.
In the news recently we see that air pollution levels are a concern for people’s health, and a recent report showed climate change is an increasingly worrying fact of modern life. So it seems logical to try to reduce our emissions wherever we can, to try to slow down climate change, and improve the health of us, and the planet wherever we can.
Electric vs Fuel Cell
More and more people are starting to use electric cars, as they don’t emit harmful gasses during use. The only problem is that they are quite limited by range in comparison to an internal combustion engine (ICE) car, and they cost a lot of money to buy. For example; an average electric car has a range of around 120 miles, whereas an average ICE car can go for around 400 miles between refills. Not only this, but the electric car will take around 8 hours to charge from flat, but in an ICE car, you can fill it up in a matter of minutes at the petrol station. These issues are making people think twice about buying an electric car, and sticking with the common, ICE car.
When a fuel cell is used in a car, it can have a similar range to an ICE car of around 400 miles. When it is empty, a refill takes the same amount of time as filling a normal car. It can achieve this as hydrogen gas is stored in large compressed gas tanks, and the oxygen is taken from the air around us. Because the fuel cell uses compressed gas as a fuel, the range is only limited to the amount of hydrogen you can store on board. The refill process involves plugging a pump onto the fuel filler valve and starting the filler pump (similar to LPG converted cars). This means that filling takes just as long as filling a normal car.
Is Hydrogen the Future?
So hydrogen fuel cells can do all the things an electric car can do, and an ICE car too. So why isn’t everyone using them?
Mainly because they are still very expensive to buy. Although large companies such as Toyota and Hyundai are looking to mass produce fuel cell cars next year, they are still quite pricey. The fuel cell uses platinum to help the reaction in the cell, and platinum is an expensive metal.
Not only this, but there are not very many filling stations around the UK, with most of them being on university premises. So it is quite difficult to keep a fuel cell car topped up with fuel at the moment.
When will we be using them more?
Current projections are for mass production of hydrogen fuel cell cars in the next five years; however it is very hard to predict this technologies growth. Once infrastructure and cost issues are tackled, there should be no reason for us not to see fuel cell cars lining our streets.
4 Comments - Leave your own
Electric cars win hands down over Fuel cell cars because they are available right here and right now.
Whilst the technology behind Fuel Cell cars is interesting, the issues I (personally) have are:
(a) Live dates for Fuel Cell cars keep getting pushed back and back. It is almost vapourware.
(b) The likes of Shell will still be my gatekeeper as I have to visit a garage to fill up my Fuel Cell car. The cost of filling my Fuel Cell car will be dictated by the same cartels that dictate the cost of petrol.
( c) By the time Fuel Cell cars and the infrastructure is genuinely on the market, battery technology and the electric highway would have improved so much that getting the same 400 miles, or whatever, will be entirely possible.
Tesla cars are already up to 300 miles per charge, but their is obviously have a price tag attached. Mass adoption of electric cars will see the price point drop, whereas the price of platinum is unlikely to drop.
I can also generate my own electricity via solar. I cannot generate my own hydrogen, and will doubles never be able to 🙂
I’m sticking with my Nissan Leaf for now, and I expect to be driving electric cars for years to come.
Hey David,
Thanks for the input, and I’m glad to hear you a running a battery electric vehicle (BEV)! Just to address a couple of your points:
(A) They do on the whole, however Hyundai have released a commercially available, mass produced fuel cell car in the last couple of months (ix35 Fuel Cell). I went over to South Korea to drive one and it is a great bit of kit. So they are starting to break into the mass market.
(B) You are right, once the big oil companies start to see an opportunity to make money, they will jump on it. Currently H2 is only available as a chemical and not a fuel. Due to this, it only costs around £5 for enough H2 to fill the Hyundai ix35 fuel cell. Once it is cleared as a fuel, the oil companies will charge a fortune, and then the government will whack a large tax on it.
(C) The battery electric market is progressing; however charge times will always be an issue. Fuel cells can be filled from empty to full in the same time a petrol car would. This will always be a point that fuel cell cars have over BEVs.
(D) Again, you are correct about the price of platinum, however BEVs use a lot of rare earth materials that are also unlikely to drop in price. Both technologies suffer from this issue.
(E) You can generate your own hydrogen; the same energy harvested by your photovoltaic (PV) panels can be fed into an electrolyser (reversed fuel cell) which splits H2O into H2 and O2. The O2 is released to atmosphere, and the H2 can be stored. Efficiencies don’t really matter with PV because it’s all free energy anyway, however with that said, the efficiencies can reach 95% in reversible fuel cells.
Keep on with the BEVs, I have nothing against them; just don’t write of fuel cells yet 🙂
Mr. Whiteley,
I’m a student at a school in Colorado, and after reading your article here on the hydrogen cell fuel cars, one thing that came to my mind was the amount of resources used to create the car batteries are for electric cars, and would fuel cell cars be the best bet? Some say the making of the car batteries itself uses up about as much fuel as cars with regular gasoline, and I was curious to see if there was any information on how much fuel it would supposedly take to create a regular platinum fuel cell battery? I think having various different types of cars using various different resources can be one solution to help slow carbon emission from fossil fuels, as long as all vehicle industries don’t lean towards one same car fuel. If some are gasoline run, some electric, and some hydrogen, as long as they all don’t go towards one specific type of car, the variation will give a load off of gasoline and fossil fuel usage, while not using out hydrogen or burning out batteries by going all electric.
This is the case, if platinum fuel cell batteries don’t use too much resources.
This is a very interesting concept to me, to have various different fuel-conserving vehicles, and I am curious of what new ways cars can gain new fuel is.
Does fuel cell batteries use up more, less or equal amounts of resources as electric or gasoline cars?
Thank you,
Nicholas.
David, Michael and Nicholas need to get laid once in a while 😣😣😣😣