Funding For Automotive Fuel Cells Cut 293
rgarbacz writes "The US will stop funding research on automotive fuel cells and redirect the work towards stationary plants, because of slow progress on the research. Developing those cells and coming up with a way to transport the hydrogen is a big challenge, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in releasing energy-related details of the administration's budget for the year beginning Oct. 1. Dr. Chu said the government preferred to focus on projects that would bear fruit more quickly. The industry and the National Hydrogen Association criticized the decision and declared their intention to fight for funding. Dr. Chu also announced that funding for a coal gasification pilot project, cut by the Bush administration, will be reinstated. The Obama administration will also drop spending for research on the exploration of oil and gas deposits because the industry itself has ample resources for that, Dr. Chu said."
fuel cells are/were a pipe dream (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And redirect the work? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm pro biofuels, but how are they going to know what technology will pan out?
You never know. But wise investment involves making your best judgment based on what is known, and what is known is that fuel cell stacks cost an order of magnitude more than even a large li-ion battery pack, have no better range or fuelling time than EVs (the only exception to the latter being if you have the fuel super-compressed at the stations, which is both dangerous and makes the stations even more expensive), have 1/3rd the fuel-cycle efficiency, have half the lifespan in the fuel cell stack, have many more moving parts than an EV, fundamentally require new infrastructure for all modes of operation (versus EVs which only need new infrastructure for long trips), and in general involve having to deal with hydrogen -- a chemical that leaks through almost anything, weakens metals, enters pipes and follows them to their destination, destroys ozone, pools under overhangs, has an incredibly low ignition energy, burns in almost any fuel-air mixture, readily undergoes deflagration to detonation transitions, and is a general PITA to store and transport.
Hydrogen fuel cells have failed to advance sufficiently to become marketable, affordable, reliable products that are decisively better for the environment, despite getting the lion's share of research funding in the past decade. EVs are far closer to this, esp. with the modern fast-charging, long-range, nontoxic li-ion variants, and hence the pendulum is now swinging in the other direction.
It's about time (Score:3, Interesting)
It's about time this was submarined. I don't know what kind of craziness has led to the obsession with fuel cells. Not only is there no hydrogen distribution infrastructure of any kind, but fuel cells still haven't gotten out of the spaceship era.
We'll be driving cars on Mr. Fusion power before we drive them on fuel cells, unless someone gets fuel cells that use something other than hydrogen working in a way that's suitable for automotive use.
Good riddance (Score:3, Interesting)
Hydrogen-powered cells for autos are a pointless waste of time with out a LOT of pre-requisite technologies. Generating the Hydrogen is an energy-wasting PITA or involves oil. Storing it in a form that even comes close to the energy density of gasoline is extremely difficult. Compressing the Hydrogen is energy-intensive. (CNG gets a LOT more energy out of the same volume of compressed gas at an identical pressure, so NG actually makes sense to compress.)
There are a LOT of things we can do to reduce pollution before we have so much spare electricity lying around that we can crack and store Hydrogen in amounts large enough to feasibly power a car.
SirWired
Re:You mean redirect the funds. (Score:3, Interesting)
and it's not like NASA and other Fed agencies haven't been working on fuel cells for like 50 years or so.
Talk about a clue, all the hydrogen hype that started in early 2000 was designed to stop the US auto industry from bringing out any fuel efficient hybrids. You know, like the ones they'd been working on through the 90s. And there was probably nothing behind how the hydrogen hype was used to get the CARB board to eliminate high fuel efficiency requirements for California and eliminate the zero emission requirements which caused GM to product the EV1.
This is all just shortsighted politics taking money away from the industry Bush created to chase after unicorns instead of fuel efficiency. Bush is a visionary isn't he? Gheesh, some peoples kids.
LoB
Re:fuel cells are/were a pipe dream (Score:5, Interesting)
Not more efficient. 1/4 to 1/2 as efficient, between the electrolysis and the fuel cell itself. Li-ion batteries are nearly lossless, chargers are usually around 92-93% efficient, and the grid is 92.8% efficient.
Hydrogen fuel cells were researched, despite its huge cost, durability, and efficiency problems, because at the time it did so much better than EVs in terms of range and charge time. But the fill time on FCVs has been going *up* as their range has increased, and the range hasn't gone up nearly as much as EVs have -- the best FCVs being passed out to limited numbers of people on a rental basis (because they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each) have worse range than the Tesla Model S or the T-Zero.
Hydrogen "economy" (Score:4, Interesting)
The hydrogen economy is a bit screwy anyway. While we already know very well how to run a car on methane, how to distribute and store methane (most homes get it through a pipeline already), and even how to retrofit existing cars for methane, AND how to synthesize methane given a good energy source, we've been throwing money down a hole for the "hydrogen economy".
That is, for a fuel we don't know how to store without it escaping and making the tank brittle in the process, that has additional hazards because it burns invisibly. Meanwhile, we're trying to come up with fuel cells to use it. It's a perfect recipe for looking like you care but delaying an actual solution for as long as possible.
Re:You mean redirect the funds. (Score:2, Interesting)
I can hardly wait for $6/gallon gas this summer!
Me too. Only I'm not being sarcastic.
($6 is, of course, over the top; the size of the subsidies is pretty tiny compared to the size of the industry. But I would like to see prices up in the $3-$4/gal range. Preferably via taxes rather than supply/demand or OPEC limits, so that the money could be used to offset the pain caused by those prices via either additional services or tax cuts.
Stupid, Stupid, Stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
I question Chu's objective logic.
The U.S. sits between 2 of the largest sources of Hydrogen on this planet. Dangerous to ship? How about shipping it as Water? Then at the "Filling Station" Use Solar, and or Wind Electricity to separate the Hydrogen out. This is already being done in Norway [ecofriendlymag.com].
Re:Includes using Hydrogen with normal IC engines? (Score:3, Interesting)
Little known fact about liquid hydrogen: as per a NASA hydrogen safety guideline document I was reading a while back, air accidentally ingested with the hydrogen during the liquefaction process makes a solid explosive with the explosive power of TNT.
Re:Real problem with auto fuel cells, the hydrogen (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I was under the impression that current methods of producing hydrogen for fuel cells was only slightly more intelligent than producing ethanol from corn.
Uh, what? A fish without a bicycle? Look, ethanol from corn is stupid because it's not very energy positive and people eat corn, and corn depletes the soil unless you grow it in a guild with squash and beans, or at least rotate your crops. We don't even use crop rotation any more in big agribusiness; it's basically hydroponics in a soil medium. The corn is fertilized with, guess what, oil. Meanwhile, hydrogen is stupid because it's difficult to store and transport and you have to use [comparatively] exotic alloys with it because of problems with hydrogen embrittlement... oh, and fuel cells are energy-intensive and toxic to make, and they wear out and have to be replenished like everything else. However, we currently have a lot of power going to waste at night and we could be making hydrogen with it. If we're currently wasting it, and we start using it for Hydrogen, then even if it's only 40% efficient we're still vastly better off than we are today.
However, a better plan than either would be to grow craploads of algae in the desert, and use our extra power to run arc lamps to provide light at night to extend the photoperiod and thus speed up the growth cycle. The emissions from the power plants can be piped through algae beds and up to 80% of the CO2 captured for reuse. The algae can be used to make biodiesel and butanol, both of which can be burned in current vehicles, transported in the current trucks, and stored and pumped with the existing tanks and pumps.
Re:You mean redirect the funds. (Score:2, Interesting)
Exactly, mod up.
Cutting funding for the pie in the sky, futuristic hydrogen research that Bush shooed in as a distraction while killing all viable research that could credibly be competitive with Saudi oil (or Iraqi oil once he freed it with the blood of thousands of Americans and trillions of dollars of our children's future for short term profits for his partners, a plan that subsequently failed to work out as planned) is just as sensible as cutting funding for Bush's failed "abstinence-only" sex education/state religion, which was just as misguided.
Re:Ask Honda. Or Mazda. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep. Obama's Energy Secretary pick, Steven Chu, is a Nobel prizewinner. While I think picking Geithner was a mistake because he was too beholden to a failed financial system, Chu's strong scientific background is leading to energy decisions based on sound scientific principles as opposed to lobbying and politics. If Obama fired Geithner and replaced him with Paul Krugman, there might actually be hope for a proper housecleaning in the financial industry, too.
Makes sense in light of battery development (Score:4, Interesting)
Hydrogen for cars mainly looked promising because the alternative non-carbon fuel was batteries, which ten years ago were nowhere close to the required performance. Then the explosion in mobile consumer electronics like laptops and cellphones brought a lot of battery research which resulted in high energy density Li-ion batteries and more recently fast-charging batteries that can be charged in a matter of minutes rather than hours. Basically developments in battery technology during the last decade has pretty much made hydrogen for automotive purposes obsolete before it was ready. There are still some issues with batteries ( mainly their high price compared to present petroleum prices) but the more recent battery generations are up to the job, and if you look at stuff that is at the engineering stage and will likely be commercialized in the near future, hydrogen seems to be a solution looking for a problem. In my opinion that application will likely be aviation where liquid hydrogen can offer an unbeatable energy/weight ratio ( in fact the highest possible of all chemical fuels ). Of course at the moment liquid hydrogen is far too expensive to produce in a CO2 neutral manner as compared to jet fuel, but that may change as Oil reserves dwindle.
Re:And redirect the work? (Score:3, Interesting)
That is simply wrong. The "cost of a large battery pack that can provide > 300 miles range per charge" depends on the chemistry, of course, but excluding the titanates, you're looking at $0.35 to $0.50 per watt hour. A Tesla or Volt-like vehicle gets about 200Wh/mi. That's $21k to $30k. Fuel cell stacks are about $10/W. A 30kW fuel cell stack -- which *also* needs a large battery pack for current buffering -- costs $300k An order of magnitude more.
As for the safety of *any* hydrogen system, check out NASA's handling guidelines [docstoc.com]. People who make money on hydrogen systems can say whatever
they want, but the facts about hydrogen are the facts.
Re:You mean redirect the funds. (Score:4, Interesting)
No, corporate welfare is bad because corporations are legal fictions; they have no natural right to exist. (Please don't bother quoting Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific at me; that particular decision -- or more particularly, the interpretation of that decision -- joins Dred Scott v. Sandford and Plessy v. Ferguson on the list of Dumbest Court Decisions Ever.) Individual welfare is ... not good, exactly, but sometimes a regrettable necessity, because people do have a right to exist. If you claim you can't see the difference, you're being deliberately blind.
Re:start building nuclear plants NOW (Score:3, Interesting)
We should immediately begin constructing new reactors globally. We need to build something like 3TW of new power generation to get the rest of the world to a standard of living approximating that of the USA... Think about 3TW of continuous power. It's impossible without nuclear or coal... Why do you want to go backwards in technology? By far the highest energy per unit is found in nuclear... we must rapidly roll out nuclear plants, for those are the only kind that suit our needs.
Fusion is seriously around the corner... we only need to get about 3 times more efficient to reach ignition. It's a walk in the park with the proper funding...
Unusually perceptive of this administration ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Fuel cells for cars are interesting, but hydrogen is over-hyped. Vehicles powered by batteries or capacitors are also emission-free (looking at the vehicle) and viable and promising. At least for distances less then 30 miles (which so happens to constitute more than 95% of all trips). So it's not a critical technology but it's a "nice to have" technology. Besides, like Chu says, hydrogen powered cars are looking at a long list of pesky and fairly fundamental problems which will take time to solve.
I applaud the decision to set up 8 smaller research establishments for 5 years instead of "one big one". Less photo opportunities perhaps, but (taking into account that they will work with local research centers and with industry) more chance of someone having a bright idea. And long enough to make it attractive for someone considering what field to specialize in to choose energy research.
I also like the decision to let the government stop looking for oil and gas. We have private industries that are quite adept at doing that, and (as Chu says) they have plenty of money to fund exploration. So pouring government funding into it is a dead waste. It's nice to be able to pick up the tab for costly and risky research for your oil-industry buddies, but that doesn't help the public.
I think this shows what can happen when you put an actual scientist in charge of research. And yes, Chu's freedom of action is severely limited by previous commitments, including the one to do research and produce material for nuclear weapons.