Chrysler Announces Hydrogen Fuel Cell Van

Juanfe writes: "Chrysler group announced a concept vehicle called the Natrium, powered by a sodium borohydride (NaBH4) engine developed by Millenium Cell. NaBH4 can be made from sodium borate -- basic borax, used in laundry detergent. MilleniumCell is a US Company that, not surprisingly, has made strategic agreements with major borax purveyors in the US (which just happens to be thought of as the largest borax reserve in the world). Could this be the start of the end of big oil and the start of the start of big Borax?" superflippy points out that Chrysler's press release is related to the Electric Vehicle Association of the Americas (EVAA) Electric Transportation Industry Conference 2001.

An article from 4 years ago

[Harumuka]

There's an article [hfcletter.com] from '97 describing Chrystler's idea for the hydrogen cell fuel car. Interesting to compare their predictions and the result four years later. Quite thought-provoking.

Ballard Power Systems

[slave2technology]

It looks like the actual fuel cell used is made by Ballard Power Systems [ballard.com]. From Millenium's home page: "We have a joint development agreement with Ballard Power Systems, initiated in October 2000, to further develop our hydrogen generation system for use with Ballard's portable power fuel cell products."

Millenium makes the system that turns the sodium borohydride into hydrogen, then Ballard's fuel cell turns the hydrogen into electricity.

I want one.

Re:The Name

[Harumuka]

Consequently, Natrium is also the technical name for Sodium. Yet there are several [google.com] foreign language names.

Latin, German, Norwegian, Swedish: Natrium

Czech: Sodík

Croatian: Natrij

Italian, Portuguese, Spanish: Sodio

Does this mean the Croatian trade name of Chyrsler's vehicle will be Natrij?

Re:End of Big Oil?

[homer_ca]

Most likely any fuel cell will be hydrocarbon based either directly or indirectly. I am not a chemical engineer, but the most economical process for creating hydrogen is from natural gas. How else are you going to get hydrogen? Electrolysis? Any business would be better off just selling the electricity unless natural gas gets a LOT more expensive.
The hydrocarbon fuel cells use a reformer to crack gasoline into hydrogen and CO2. It's just moving the chemical plant into the car.

Re:cost?

[dhovis]

it says that is not dangerous and nonflammable, etc. but hydrogen is one of the byproducts?? that sounds rather misleading.

One of the biggest problems for gaining acceptance of hydrogen as a fuel is containment of the hydrogen. Hydrogen gas will diffuse out of any container you put it in. So if you have a tank of hydrogen sitting around for a while (how long depends on the material), you will end up with an empty tank.

What makes this solution elegant is that they hydrogen is chemically locked up. As long as the NaBH4 is long lived, then you don't have to worry about it.

Also, the NaBH4 is only refined into hydrogen and borax when hydrogen is needed, so the amount of hydrogen around is relatively small at any given time.

Incidently, hydrogen is not that flamable. You need a proper combination of hydrogen, oxygen, and heat to set it burning and hydrogen dissipates very quickly. (And don't start talking about hydrogen bombs, you need a fission bomb just to ignite one of those and the hydrogen needs to be the heavier (and less common) isotopes anyway.

Re:Huge water tank?

[sam_handelman]

Well, according to them [millenniumcell.com] it contains about the same amount of energy per gram as gasoline. It's as dense as water [ox.ac.uk] (about), while gas is half as dense, so, assuming you don't have to dilute it in order to store it, your tank of sodium borohydrate should be smaller than an equivalent gas tank. However, you're right about the water.

So, every 3+5+4 = 12 grams of sodium borohydrate (1 mole) need 2 * (18) = 36 grams (2 moles) of water. At that rate, you end up with four times the mass, which is over twice the volume, of water and sodium borohydrate together, as you'd need of gasoline.

Re:what i really want to know....

[Rothfuss]

No you cannot retrofit current automobiles.

Fuel cell vehicles do not use direct combustion engines so there is very little in common with a traditional vehicle. You would be much better off trying to upgrade from an electric car.

Rothfuss

Safe? Nope

[SpacePunk]

Here's a couple of links.

http://espi-metals.com/msds's/sodiumborohydride. pd f

http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/SO/sodium_borohydr id e.html

Here's what the article says about Sodium Borohydride...

"To solve those problems, Chrysler's system stores hydrogen in sodium borohydride powder, which is nonflammable and nontoxic"

Here's what the data sheets say...

"Stable, but reacts readily with water (reaction may be violent). Incompatible with water, oxidising agents, carbon dioxide, hydrogen halids, acids, palladium, ruthenium and other metal salts, glass. Flammable solid. Air-sensitive."

"Toxic by ingestion. Risk of serious internal burns if ingested. Harmful if inhaled and in contact with skin. May cause burns or severe irritation in contact with skin or eyes.
Toxicity data
(The meaning of any abbreviations which appear in this section is given here.)
ORL-RAT LD50 89 mg kg-1
SKN-RBT LD50 4000 mg kg-1
IPR-RAT LD50 18 mg kg-1

Risk phrases
(The meaning of any risk phrases which appear in this section is given here.)
R15 R25 R34."

Looks to me like big business is full of shit yet again.

-

Re:cost?

[Rothfuss]

One of the biggest problems for gaining acceptance of hydrogen as a fuel is containment of the hydrogen. Hydrogen gas will diffuse out of any container you put it in. So if you have a tank of hydrogen sitting around for a while (how long depends on the material), you will end up with an empty tank.

You're smoking crack here dhovis.

Containment is one of the biggest problems with hydrogen fuel cells, but it is not because of the hydrogen diffusivity through metals (yes it does, but very slowly...not a big deal), but rather the handling properties of combustible gases as opposed to liquid fuels.

The energy density of a liquid hydrocarbon (based on heat of combustion) is about 100,000 Btu/gallon. For hydrogen it is a little less than 40 Btu/gallon at 1 atmosphere pressure and room temperature. So you need to compress the hell out of it to get a sufficiently high energy density.

That is the containment problem people don't like. Nobody will care if a year passes and you have lost 1% of your hydrogen.

-Rothfuss

Re:More on Millennium Cell

[Mithrandur]

The "polution shifting" problem is much less of a problem than it might seem at first glance. Assume that all the extra electricity necessary to power all traditional electric cars is produced by combusting gasoline. However, instead of doing this in a million independent facilities (the engines of your car) with almost no monitoring and very loose ecological controls, it is done in a single facility carefully designed for maximum efficiency. So instead of people driving untuned decade old gas guzzlers, everyone is driving with the most efficient engine possible.

In addition, since all the polution is produced in one place, many measures can be taken to ensure that the polution is minimized.

Basically, it's like everyone getting their power from one big car that is constantly worked on by a team of engineers to ensure maximum efficiency.

So in the worst case, electric cars are better.

Re:End of Big Oil?

[gloth]

It's Daimler, not Dahmler

Re:More on Millennium Cell

[syphax]

An electric vehicle or hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle doesn't just displace pollution from the tailpipe to the smokestack- power plants tend to be more efficient than internal combustion engines (the real strength of the latter IMHO is the ability to easily produce variable power), and depending on the plant and energy source, may have lower emissions per unit energy produced, so there are some real environmental gains to be made.

And b/c you aren't tied to petroleum as an energy source anymore, you can go really green and produce your electrical power or hydrogen (apply the former to water to get the latter) or boron hydrides using wind or solar energy- wind energy is economically competitive with the fossils today.

SO as much as boron hydrides seem to have better energy density that today's batteries, I'm intrigued.

Re:End of Big Oil?

[Surak]

I've worked in the U.S. auto industry for nearly 3 years now, and having been born, raised and living in the Detroit area most of my life, the auto industry has been a big part of my existence.

I can tell you that the U.S. auto industry and the U.S. oil industry are hardly in cahoots. The biggest problem is that the companies working on alternative fuel vehicles/electric vehicles/fuel cell vehicles basically keep screwing themselves over.

One problem is that they develop a technology, spending billions of dollars. As soon as it's proven that they can't make cars that are affordable or practical to the general populace, they scrap it and start over, rather than introducing the vehicles to certain niche market segments, learning from that and making improvements, all the while collecting revenue from the people and companies that are buying the vehicles.

Another problem is that they're too worried and too wrapped up in trying to make a vehicle that can be produced by existing manufacturing techniques. The car comapanies don't want to spend the required billions to completely retool all their factories to produce a different product.

Of course you know what the funny thing is? The car companies completely retool their factories every few years ANYWAY and spend those billions ANYWAY, because their current method of designing and building tooling pretty much involves this: if there is a change in the body style (for instance), no matter how insignificant, START OVER and redesign and rebuild the tool FROM SCRATCH. Really. I've worked with the tooling companies for years, trust me. :)

Shhh! Don't tell the car company execs that! They think they have billions invested in their current manufacturing techniques and that they haven't changed in years, when in fact they get completely overhauled every few years.

The car companies really have no loyalties to the oil industry. They're whores. They'll do anything to sell vehicles. And they KNOW that they must develop fuel cell technologies and make them so that they are affordable and practical for the everyday person. Otherwise, they face extinction. I've seen their business plans, and they definitely involve exploring every technology possible, be it borax-derivative fuel cells, solar power, wind power, ethanol, batteries, other technologies. Whatever it takes.

We should constantly verify our perceptions...

[neibwe]

Unlike some other conspiracies, the automobile/oil industry ones have some interesting history. I'd say it's more like interesting food for though, and it's not from some paranoid kook either --I'm not one to believe in paranoid conspiracies, new age cures, faith healing, visits from intelligent extra-terrestrials, mysticism, etcetera. I do however believe in sunshine (anti-backroom) laws, fair competition (through iron handed regulation if necessary, and good public policy.

Michael Parenti in Democracy for the Few (6th Ed.)[1] writes about some disturbing observations. The energy frugality of mass-transit was so "undesirable" to the oil and auto industries" that "[f]or over a half-century their response has been to undermine th nation's rail and electric-bus system."

The undermining of Los Angeles's 1935 "75-mile radius" "3,000 quiet, pollution-free electric trains [carrying"80 million people a year" was carried out by:

"General Motors

and[emph. mine] Standard Oil, using dummy corporations as fronts [through which they] purchased the system, crapped its electric cards, tore down its transmission lines, and placed GM buses fueled by Standard Oil...By 1955, 88 percent of nation's electric streetcar network had been eliminated by collaborators like GM, Standard Oil, Greyhound, and Firestone. In short time, they cut back city and suburban bus services, forcing people to rely increasingly on private cars. In 1949, General Motors was found guilty of conspiracy[emph. mine] in these activities and fined the devestating sum of $5,000."[23]

He follows up with the influence of cars, extended references of death rates --"2x accumulated number of Americans killed in all the wars ever fought by the United States"", urban air pollution, massive automobile land use, "$300 billion annual subsid[ies]", while "...mass transit--the most efficient, cleanest, and safest form of transporting goods and people" is abandoned. (p. 106)

I believe the money used "to subsidize automobile use" can be viewed, from one perspective, as an example of an economic freeloader. As auto companies undermine mass transit, thus using public dollars (which they only pay a fraction of) to fund expensive automobile public infrastructure.

I particularly like how he states that "[g]iven the absence of alternative mods of transportatoin, people become dependent on the automobile as a way of life so that their need for cars is often as real as their need for jobs." The economic burden of autos is pretty high for most americans. It's not like a $1000 tv, or $300 bike. It's a monthy loan payment, and then it's a bi-annual insurance payment, and finally its massive social/tax/healthcare cost from the "46,000 people killed" and "2,000,000 people injured" in traffic accidents. It makes wonder if the Segway could make a dent into this automobile entity we all have to live with?[24][25]

_____ >Parenti's footnotes<
23. Jonathan Kwitny, "The Great Transportation Conspiracy,"in Cargan and Ballantin (eds.), Sociological Footprints, 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1982)
24. Bureau of Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States 1992 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1992); Andrew Kimbrell, "Car Culture: Driving Ourselves Crazy,"Washington Post September 3, 1989. Kimbrell notes that fatality statistics may be too low since they do not include deaths that occur several days after accidents or off-road.[2] he points out that motor vehicles kill easily one million animals each day, making road kills second only to the meat industry. More deer are killed by cars than by hunters.[3]
25. Kimbrell, "Car Culture" >/Parenti's footnotes<

_____
1. "a major voice among political progressives"...Ph.D from Yale...lectures frequently at college campuses across the country." --[from back cover]
2. My grandfather died because of accident related complications =(
3. Animal rights activists will have a hard time stopping consumers from driving though, considering how car ownership is ingrained. And/or how convenient it is.