FuelCellsWorks

Every major automaker is investing in development of ways to make cars move without petroleum or at least less of it. But there are also lots of smaller companies looking for breakthroughs that would allow us to keep driving without altering the climate and without propping up the world’s petrocracies.

One inventor working on the problem is Swedish engineer and entrepreneur Nils Kongmark, who with two physicist colleagues has designed a solar-powered device that extracts hydrogen and oxygen from superheated steam. The device would be small enough to fit on the roof of a gas station, producing hydrogen locally for cars powered by fuel cells. Carmakers including Daimler, Honda and Toyota still see hydrogen as ultimately the best way to replace oil.

The process developed by Kongmark’s Britain-based company, H2 Power Systems, sounds promising. Scientists have known how to separate the H2 from the O in water for a century. The problem is that existing methods use more energy to produce the hydrogen than the hydrogen gives back. There’s no net energy gain. Kongmark says that, with the help of materials not available until recently, he has solved this problem.

H2 Power System’s “solar water cracker” uses the sun to generate heat used to separate the hydrogen atoms in water from the oxygen atoms. But any source of heat can be used. Because the device can be made small and installed where it’s needed, it would avoid some of the transport and storage problems that have stood in the way of hydrogen becoming a widespread energy source.

An additional benefit of H2 Power’s process is that it also produces pure oxygen. Fuel cells need oxygen as well as hydrogen to produce electricity, and work much more efficiently with pure oxygen rather than drawing from the atmosphere. Kongmark says the solar water cracker potentially could produce energy from hydrogen that would be significantly cheaper than current power sources, helping to usher in the hydrogen economy that was much vaunted a decade ago but never lived up to the hype.

Kongmark, who’s raising money with the help of Convexity, a Frankfurt-based financial advisor, must still prove that his device will work. H2 Power Systems is six months from a working prototype, he says. Kongmark, a heat-exchange specialist who says he has founded more than 30 companies, concedes that, “Making a prototype is one thing, industrializing it is a much different thing.”

So whether H2 Power Systems has found the key to cheap, clean energy is impossible to say at the moment. The encouraging thing is that Kongmark and his colleagues are among thousands of scientists and inventors working on better ways to produce hydrogen or more efficient batteries and the other technologies we’ll need to stay on the road without destroying the planet.

Some are working out of their garages, others in big companies. Germany’s Linde, the world’s largest producer of industrial gases, has developed a technique to produce hydrogen from waste glycerine. With so many good minds attacking the energy problem, somebody is bound to succeed.

Professor John Zhu

A University of Queensland researcher has successfully completed a lab-scale test on a new technology which has the potential to revolutionise the way the world views and uses coal.

Chemical engineer Professor John Zhu from the School of Chemical Engineering is working on Direct Carbon Fuel Cells (DCFC) which will create twice as much power from coal as current methods and minimise greenhouse gas emissions.

Professor Zhu said that when coal reacts with air in the DCFC, it generated highly energy-efficient electricity.

“The very high energy efficiency of the new technology will effectively halve the amount of coal required to create electricity,” Professor Zhu said.

“When applied, it will provide industry with very significant cost and energy savings, which could then be passed on to the consumer.”

In addition to saving cost and energy, the DCFC will also provide clean power.

Professor Zhu expects the DCFC will enable the byproduct of coal-fired power – the harmful greenhouse gas carbon dioxide – to be trapped and stored easily and safely.

“One of the major challenges for coal-fired power is reducing its impact on the environment by developing ways to separate carbon dioxide from other gases produced in the power generation process, and ensuring it is not released into the atmosphere,” Professor Zhu said.

“The DCFC produces pure carbon dioxide as a byproduct, making it much easier to manage.”

The next stage in development will involve consulting with the energy sector and securing industry and government funding to scale up the DCFC technology.

Executive Dean of UQ’s Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology, Professor Graham Schaffer said the new DCFC technology was one of a number of clean energy technologies being progressed by the University.

“UQ engineers are on the front lines in the battle to develop low emission coal technologies and deliver renewable energy sources such as hydrogen, geothermal and solar energy,” he said.

“Partnerships with industry and government have enabled our researchers to make significant progress towards these new technologies, which are vital if we are to meet the challenges of clean energy and climate change.”

With funding, the new DCFC technology is expected to be ready for implementation in about 10 years.

The Technology Strategy Board has invested £1.4m to help widen the use of the propulsion platform used in the first manned fuel-cell aircraft.

Loughborough-based Intelligent Energy plans to use the funding to boost a three-year programme aimed at repurposing its fuel-cell stack technology for cars and light commercial vehicles.

The group claims its design is more power-dense and compact than competitor systems, giving it the potential to be used commercially in the automotive industry, alongside parallel renewable-energy technologies.

Dennis Hayter, Intelligent Energy’s vice-president of business development, said: ‘We’ve already developed the first of our 10kW automotive systems with Peugeot. This project will move the technology into the wider automotive market. We will look at addressing the areas currently challenging all fuel-cell manufacturers: performance, lifetime, temperature range and reliability.’

The company hopes to move its fuel-cell system to a 30kW platform and extend its performance lifetime from 1,000 to 5,000 hours. It also plans to extend the temperature range from a -20°C unassisted cold start to -25°C and up to 45°C to meet the increased temperatures found in parts of its European market.

Hayter added that one of the programme’s cornerstones would be to undertake a systems engineering approach. ‘This will create five separate modules consisting of the control and health monitoring, the hydrogen supply side, air, water and stack,’ he said. ‘These can be constructed and maintained separately and so act as “plug and play” devices to minimise downtime and improve production efficiency.’

The project is due to begin next month with input from Ricardo Engineering, Dyson, TRW Conekt, Royal Mail, DHL and the Tata European Technical Centre.