Funding For Automotive Fuel Cells Cut

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."

I think plants are already stationary

I mean... you stick them in the ground, and they stay there. It's really pretty consistent. If your tree walks away, it's probably not a tree. I don't know how much funding this needs, but if it is more than $0, it's too much.

Time for a terrible British pun...

...if you think it's a tree but it gets up and walks away, then it probably Ent [wikipedia.org].

Re:Time for a terrible British pun...

Run, forest, run!

Re:I think plants are already stationary

Got to be careful though, you never know when they might cross the street [servimg.com].

Real problem with auto fuel cells, the hydrogen.

I thought the real problem was creating the hydrogen in the first place. Not to mention the problem of compressing it to a point that it had a reasonable amount of energy per unit of volume.

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.

Re:Real problem with auto fuel cells, the hydrogen

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.

Lighting plants with plant power

row 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.

Instead of doing this, why don't we grow rats, and have cats eat them. Then we harvest some of the cats, and kill the others to feed to the rats.

Re:Real problem with auto fuel cells, the hydrogen

As far as I know, hydrogen fuel was always really an energy storage medium rather than a fuel in and of itself. While it may be the most common element in the universe, free H2 isn't especially abundant on Earth. If you could store it well, it would allow electric vehicles to have the same convenience as petroleum-powered vehicles.

The biggest problems with pure electric cars are that the range is limited and that you can't refill it in a matter of minutes. A pure battery-EV doesn't really allow any kind of long-distance road trip. This is the appeal of plug-in hybrids, it gives you range and easy refilling capability while potentially allowing zero-emissions driving during normal city driving/commuting. Although a hydrogen energy storage system would require new infrastructure, it would serve as a great long-term solution that fits with most peoples lifestyles.

As with any kind of EV, the 'green-ness' depends on the original source of the power. Even from fossil fuels it would probably be slightly better, since large fixed plants are more efficient and cleaner, but definitely better with wind/solar/nuclear/geothermal/whatever.

Note though, that the requirement for all of this is efficient, easy and safe storage, which has been going nowhere with plenty of funding. I think biofuels from non-food crops on non-food-producing land (i.e. not corn ethanol) are a more feasible long term solution, either with or without plug-in hybrid vehicles.

Good

Hydrogen doesn't have the density we need and it's difficult to move.
Batteries. Focus on batteries, industrial solar thermal, and Nuclear.

That can solve are energy needs.

Hydrogen "economy"

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.

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

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].

Makes sense in light of battery development

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.

You mean redirect the funds.

Its a new team in town, with a different set of friends that need to be 'greased'.

Its just typical ( shortsighted ) politics at work here. Nothing new.

Re:You mean redirect the funds.

Funding is not unlimited; you make the decision about what to fund by doing a cost-benefit analysis using current estimates. This is exactly what they did, and they arrived upon the conclusion that plug-in hybrids and electric cars are current the most effective use of research monies.

You may disagree with the conclusion, but don't write it off as simply shortsighted politics.

Re:You mean redirect the funds.

President Obama lives by the saying "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

Hydrogen power sounds good on paper, but we need something that works soon.

Quoting Patton: A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

We, as a country, have limited resources. We have a lot that needs to get fixed. Let's be smart about it.

Re:You mean redirect the funds.

Wow, paying the unsubsidized market rate for a commodity is getting raped?

Anyways, you'll only get raped if you have a gas guzzler. If you have at least a half-decent fuel efficient car, you'll be just fine. If you drive an alternative fuel vehicle, you won't even feel a thing.

Having the customer pay the full, unsubsidized price for gas may actually create real competition in the vehicle fuel market. If people had a choice between gas or an alternative fuel, then the gas companies would have no choice but to keep their prices competitive to that alternative fuel, wouldn't they?

Or worse yet, people may actually get used to driving less and taking public transit as part of their daily commute instead!

Re:You mean redirect the funds.

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:And redirect the work?

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.

Re:No New Infrastructure Needed

No it's not. Well, yes to the Volt, but the others are non-plug-in parallel hybrids, whereas the Volt is a plug-in series hybrid and the Metric Mind AC Honda [metricmind.com] (which I believe is the one the GPP mentioned) is a pure plug-in electric with optional range extender trailer. A fuel range-extender for long trips means that the car's electric-only range isn't an issue, while being able to charge from the grid means that in practice, very little fuel is actually consumed.

And the fact that you can build the equivalent of those big-company factory cars in your garage and achieve fairly similar performance and practicality says a lot about how hard building one of these cars is NOT.

Re:Brilliant

It's had the lion's share of research funding for the past decade, and despite that, has been lapped on pretty much every front by EVs.

It's electric vehicles' turn.

Re:fuel cells are/were a pipe dream

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.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

That makes sense. The oil industry is already established and making tons in profits. They should be able to fund their own development.

Emerging technologies on the other hand sometimes need a boost.

Re:csh

A pretty hardcore lisp.

Re:start building nuclear plants NOW

A) We haven't built a plant in 30 years. How do you know that it is expensive when you have no data to back it up? Or have you looked at France's and Japan's data for their standardized reactor design?

B) Chernoby was so completely different from any reactor the US has ever implemented (including the lack of a containment dome) it is just pure FUD to even bring it up.

C) Recycling the so called waste will yield a sizeable amount of fuel and the remaining short lived waste could be stored in the mines the uranium ore came out of in the first place.

D) See C combined with: I thought the idea was to get away from coal?

Oh, and to E from the AC: Actually, we have about a few thousand year supply of Uranium in the US alone (Virginia) and that does not include sea water extraction. Breeder reactors also allow the production of more fuel. It is either a renewable or going to last so long that fusion will come about before we run out.

Re:Anyone else notice this part?

Wrong. There's such a glut of oil that tankers have nowhere to go [telegraph.co.uk]. On top of that, gas prices dropped like a rock over the last two year with only meager price hikes.