RC Hydrogen Fuel Cell - eBikes Next?

[StevenR]

engadget has a story on a fuel cell for RC Cars...
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/03/horizon-debuts-h-cell-2-0-hydrogen-fuel-cell-system-for-r-c-cars/
It makes an RC car go 50mph for 45 minutes. "Hydrogen is stored in a metal matrix". It is called a hybrid so it sounds like it has a battery. They also talk about a "revolutionary charging system that could be solar or wind powered". Carrying a (cryogenic? ultra-high pressure? You ain't gonna make a liquid, are you?) can of hydrogen or a simple plug-in hydrogen-maker to refuel instantly or just a bigger metal matrix (inside the frame tubes? - how big is it?). Cool idea, lots of questions. Poking around the links doesn't provide much more detail. Ears to the ground...

 

[swbluto]

A hygrogen fuel cell is basically a battery, where the energy is stored by the hydrogen's chemical energy instead of the lattice energy of lithium ion. A viable hydrogen fuel cell would be cool, too, since I would expect it to have a much nicer gravimetric energy density than modern lithium batteries. The fuel cell would hook up to an ordinary RC motor, though I wouldn't know if the controller would have to be "custom" for whatever reason. I looked up the specs, and it appears they have an ordinary battery for "peak power". It seems the cost of a hydrogen system is proportional to its power output, rather than heavily influenced by energy capacity as with batteries.

It seems ebikes are inevitable. First ordinary cars, now R/C cars - It looks like ebikes are now being targeted by a two-prong attack.

Btw, I love that car's sound. I'm not sure if it's the motor or something else.

Looking at their other technologies, it states that the lead replacement has "3 times the energy for the same weight of lead". :| I was hoping for a bit more since lithium can have like 5 times the energy density of lead. Still, if the price is right for a 1 kw or so system... for others' convenience, the website is http://horizonfuelcell.com/ .

Although, that was apparently the stationary power category. The "aerospace category" at http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/aerospace.htm has a hydrogen fuel cell that has a claimed energy density of around 480ish wh/kg. That I like. I don't know what the power density at that energy density is, though.

 

[AussieJester]

The 'range' is impressive the speed is less than pathetic though for an rc car...

KiM

 

[grindz145]

I looked into getting a fuel cell for me ebike as a range-extender. The size I would want is about 2 grand though (300w). I'm not sure I still won't do it.... hydrogen is a pain to deal with though...

 

[swbluto]

I contacted them about prices and they linked me to http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/file/H-Series.pdf for more specs.

From the correspondence, it appears that the needed hydrogen would be stored "in a canister" that they can provide. That suggests that the energy storage is still a problem to be solved(Hydrogen storage in a canister), though it seems they may have the "hydrogen burner" solved and up and running (The so called "fuel cell"). They asked for more contact information and didn't quote a price.

In regard to price, I think there's a high likelihood of it being a "new product" and thus it'll have a really high price tag (basically to recoup development costs). Such was the case with LiPo not too long ago...

 

[monster]

the hydrogen is probably stored in a matal hydride canister. its a metal powder that the hydrogen adsobs into, a bit like the way lithium ions are stored in the graphite or licoo2 electrodes in a lion cell.

it sucks when you have to store a light weight fuel in such a heavy cage.

 

[grindz145]

Hydrogen fuel cells have been around for a while in military applications and otherwise. Even in volume Hydrogen is a lonngg way out for a mass market. I've heard from some of the guys that worked at the GM fuel cell research facility locally, that most of the research they do there is theater, just to show they are doing it. The researchers are held back (as I understand it) in order to stick to a very emaciated budget for something never intended to become a product in the foreseeable future. Hopefully other researchers aren't held up like this because I would love to see it come to fruition mainstream.

 

[paultrafalgar]

I emailed Riversimple suggesting they consider making an after-market kit to convert a trike (e.g. KMX) with their system.

 

[magudaman]

The canisters are actually fairly energy dense. They claim they weight 90g and contain 12wh of power. For contrast the A123 M1 cells weighs 70g and has 7.6wh of power. It would be cool if that same processing unit could pump out continuous 600W and then you could string together like 100 canisters. Hopefully there comes a day. Check out there aerospace stuff 1650wh in a complete under 10lbs package! http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/aerospace.htm

 

[bigmoose]

Long story short... was involved in a study of fuel cells about 8 or 9 years ago. Bottom line is there is not enough platinum in the world to replace the current ICE fleet with a hydrogen fueled proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell fleet. Solid oxide fuel cells met the material availability issue (though they used rare earth elements in the ceramics) but they took a bit less than an hour to bring them from cold standby to on line due to thermal constraints. (The larger the solid oxide fuel cell, the longer it took to come online from a cold start.) I visited a vendor many times that had a 1KW solid oxide fuel cell system that was sulfur tolerant, running. The complete fuel in to power out was about the size of 3 large, old style microwave ovens stacked end to end. I do not believe he has been successful commercializing it at this time.

In both of these systems one does well to not neglect the "balance of plant" needed to make the system work. I saw 25 KW liquid reformers the size of a large panel trucks; I also saw a 5KW natural gas to hydrogen reformer operating that was the size of 5 soda cans stacked end to end. In the case of the natural gas reformer, you just couldn't "throw away" the BTU's that came from the carbon atom to harvest the hydrogen, it was too wasteful.

I have opined in the past that if we go with hydrogen is an energy carrier, note that it is not an energy source as you have to make it when you need it. I believe it will be created in a downstream process from a nuclear reactor. Either pure hydrolysis or with thermal assist from a high temperature reactor.

I therefore see the merit in plug in hybrids for short trips in the near term future, and synthetic liquid fueled transport for long trips in the distant future.

These are interesting times needing very good engineers! The times they are a changin'

 

[John in CR]

BigMoose,

I am understanding you correctly that with cheap and abundant electricity, hydrogen becomes useful as a fuel, assuming the storage issue is resolved?

 

[bigmoose]

John, I think "cheap" is being redefined as we speak... with this global financial anomaly/meltdown. It will take a few years for us all to know what the new definition is of "cheap electricity".

If the source of the energy for "creating" hydrogen is fossil fuel, it is a non-starter. You are better off burning the prime hydrocarbon in the transportation vehicle due to system efficiencies.

Therefore there is only one source left to create our energy carrier, hydrogen, from: nuclear fission. There are two others, but IMHO they are longshots, one more than the other. When I was in grad school, we were all hyped about plasma containment and fusion in a bottle. 34 years have passed and we have yet to run a pilot plant. It is a HUGE capital project on top of needed technical breakthroughs. I think it's probability of occurrence is slim to none. Even if we could contain the plasma, we have yet to even begin to engineer out the neutron lattice damage to Ni bearing vacuum chamber walls. The other source for hydrogen might be designer algae. Less capital sensitive, and possible, perhaps with genetic engineering. I've heard of some progress at the university level, but then the trail has gone cold. I give it 7% probability of occurrence in the next 13 years.

FWIW I think the USA will embrace natural gas in a big way in the near term future. The Honda GX Civic's are technically spot on. Refueling with Phil was mostly there. I looked into setting up an installation at my homestead. Couldn't get a Phil in Ohio. Just like the EV-1 but with a twist. The GX is still here, but where is a certified, personal size refilling station?

BTW we have pilot plants running that are growing algae with 45 to 55% by mass lipids (oil). The algae pools also do best around my latitude and 600 miles south. This has potential worth watching in my book. There are a couple of good Department of Energy reports on pilot plants circulating. DOE has been funding this research for over 10 years... stay tuned.

 

[liveforphysics]

Honda has in-home setups for the FCX. It uses the cracking natural gas method as the hydrogen source. It does two very slick things with the waste heat of pulling off that carbon atom. The unit functions as the home's hot water heater, and while it's still higher grade thermal energy, it runs some type (maybe turbine? stirling? ) of compressor to compress and store the hydrogen it liberates from the natural gas.

I remember reading about this way back when I was in school, and they had something like 25 demo units setup in homes in Japan for home re-fueling of the FCX cars getting tested, and appearently it worked as smoothly as everything we're used to seeing from Honda.

I would assume in the last 5 years it's only improved from that point, yet I don't remember seeing anything about it lately.

 

[liveforphysics]

Hmm... this was all I could find about it now... They seem to have gone from having loads of technical specifications and a group of working proto-types in homes in Japan to having a cartoony picture ...

http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/home-energy-station.aspx



Similar to what they've done with all Honda automobiles lately... It went from logical extremely high performance chassis and
suspension designs in the late 80s to late 90s, towards heavy sluggy cartoons with no performance. lol

Appearently the new FCX has a 60% system efficiency, which is not too shabby.
100kw of power, and a big'ol lithium ion battery to buffer the power demands and help compensate for the inherently slow rate the fuel cell can ramp-up and down power production on demand.

http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/specifications.aspx

 

[bigmoose]

Luke thanks for the links. Huge difference between Honda innovation and that of Government Motors (GM) even though the good data is off the web.

 

[olaf-lampe]

There is a chance of getting a small fuel cell that may fit in a bikes frame:
Most of the space is used for supercaps...

http://video.google.com/videosearch?sourceid=ie7&q=rotterdam+hydrogen+kart&rls=com.microsoft:de:IE-SearchBox&oe=UTF-8&rlz=1I7ACAW&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=aNxuS_K6OYLh-Qbx58z7Aw&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CBwQqwQwAw#

-Olaf
BTW: BMW and Daimler Benz stopped with their hydrogen programs, after beeing more than 14 years subsidized by german government with almost no result...

 

[grindz145]

Hmm... this was all I could find about it now... They seem to have gone from having loads of technical specifications and a group of working proto-types in homes in Japan to having a cartoony picture ...

http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/home-energy-station.aspx



Similar to what they've done with all Honda automobiles lately... It went from logical extremely high performance chassis and
suspension designs in the late 80s to late 90s, towards heavy sluggy cartoons with no performance. lol

Appearently the new FCX has a 60% system efficiency, which is not too shabby.
100kw of power, and a big'ol lithium ion battery to buffer the power demands and help compensate for the inherently slow rate the fuel cell can ramp-up and down power production on demand.

http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/specifications.aspx

I wonder if the robot in the cartoon is an indication of how far out this type of installation is.....

It's great to hear about the technology from someone who has intimate knowledge. Pure EVs are gaining momentum quickly though, and I imagine pure EVs will come to fruition in the near term and hopefully some alternatives will also show up soon as well.

 

[paultrafalgar]

I emailed Riversimple suggesting they consider making an after-market kit to convert a trike (e.g. KMX) with their system.

... and here's their reply:

"Dear Paul,

Thanks for your interest! Why not check out www.40fires.org as the car
will be open source designed. You can chip in there. Thanks,

Will
"