Mitsubishi Power Receives Order For First Solid Oxide Fuel Cell In Europe
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on Fuel Cells Works.
A fuel cell converts a fuel like hydrogen or natural gas directly into heat and electricity, so what is a solid state fuel cell?
Wikipedia has an entry for solid state fuel cell, that appears to be professionally written.
The entry sums up their advantages and disadvantages in this sentence.
Advantages of this class of fuel cells include high combined heat and power efficiency, long-term stability, fuel flexibility, low emissions, and relatively low cost. The largest disadvantage is the high operating temperature which results in longer start-up times and mechanical and chemical compatibility issues.
They sound to be a tricky engineering challenge.
Bosch Likely To Slash Platinum In New Fuel Cells
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Automotive News Europe.
This is the first paragraph.
Bosch expects platinum to play only a minor role in its new fuel cells, with the supplier only needing a tenth of the metal used in current fuel cell vehicles, Reuters estimates.
The amount will be similar to that in the average catalytic converter, which must surely be a good thing.
Bosch are in a joint venture with Swedish fuel cell maker, Powercell
How Much Energy Can Extracted From A Kilogram Of Hydrogen?
This article on EnergyH, is entitled About Hydrogen Energy.
This is said.
Hydrogen has an energy density of 39 kWh/kg, which means that 1 kg of hydrogen contains 130 times more energy than 1kg of batteries. So lots of energy can be stored with hydrogen in only a small volume.
But as in most things in life, you can’t have it all as fuel cells are not 100 % efficient.
Wikipedia has a sub-section which gives the in-practice efficiency of a fuel cell, where this is said.
In a fuel-cell vehicle the tank-to-wheel efficiency is greater than 45% at low loads and shows average values of about 36% when a driving cycle like the NEDC (New European Driving Cycle) is used as test procedure. The comparable NEDC value for a Diesel vehicle is 22%. In 2008 Honda released a demonstration fuel cell electric vehicle (the Honda FCX Clarity) with fuel stack claiming a 60% tank-to-wheel efficiency.
For the purpose of this exercise, I’ll assume a conservative forty percent.
This means that a kilogram of hydrogen would generate 16 kWh
Raise that efficiency to fifty percent and 19 kWh would be generated.
Conclusion
Fuel cell efficiency will be key.
The Anonymous Widower 