Will Future Cars Store Hydrogen?

 Hydrogen is the fuel of the future. Unfortunately, one problem remains: Hydrogen is a gas and cannot easily be pumped into a tank like gasoline. Storage in the form of solid hydrides, chemical compounds of hydrogen and a metal or semimetal, are good storage materials in principle, but have not been well suited to automotive applications.

An American research team at the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn and the University of California, Los Angeles, has now developed a novel hydride that could be a useful starting point for the development of future automotive hydrogen-storage materials.

As Jun Yang and his team have reported* an “autocatalytic” reaction mechanism causes the composite made of three different hydrides to rapidly release hydrogen at lower temperatures and without dangerous by-products.

Certain hydrogen compounds, such as lithium borohydride (LiBH₄ ) and magnesium hydride (MgH₂), can release hydrogen and then take it up again. However, for automotive applications, they require temperatures that are too high to release hydrogen, the hydrogen release and uptake are far too slow, and decomposition reactions release undesirable by-products such as ammonia. In addition, these compounds can only be “recharged” under very high pressure and temperature conditions. The combination of two different hydrides (binary hydride) has previously been shown to improve things, as these compounds partly release hydrogen at lower temperatures than either of the individual components.

The researchers led by Yang went a step further and combined three hydrogen-containing compounds—lithium amide (LiNH₂), lithium borohydride, and magnesium hydride—in a 2:1:1 ratio to form a ternary hydride. This trio has substantially better properties than previous binary materials.

Developing Pollution-free Cars?

 Hydrogen-powered cars that do not pollute the environment are a step closer thanks to a new discovery which promises to solve the main problem holding back the technology.

Whilst hydrogen is thought to be an ideal fuel for vehicles, producing only water on combustion, its widespread use has been limited by the lack of a safe, efficient system for onboard storage.

Scientists have experimented with ways of storing hydrogen by locking the gas into metal lattices, but metal hydrides only work at temperatures above 300°C and metal organic framework materials only work at liquid nitrogen temperatures (-198°C).

Now scientists at the University of Bath have invented a material which stores and releases hydrogen at room temperature, at the flick of a switch, and promises to help make hydrogen power a viable clean technology for the future.

Although its fuel to weight ratio is insufficient to make an entire hydrogen tank from it, the material could be used in combination with metal hydride sources to store and release energy instantaneously whilst the main tank reaches sufficient temperature, 300°C, to work.

They hope to have the fully-working prototype ready within two to three years.

“The problem of how to store hydrogen has been a major bottleneck in the development of the hydrogen power technology,” said Dr Andrew Weller from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Bath (UK).

“Hydrogen has a low density and it only condenses into liquid form at -252°C so it is difficult to use conventional storage systems such as high-pressure gas containers which would need steel walls at least three inches thick, making them too heavy and too large for cars.

“The US Department of the Energy has said that it wants six per cent of the weight of hydrogen storage systems to be hydrogen in order to give new hydrogen powered cars the same kind of mileage per tank of fuel as petrol-based systems.

“Whilst metal hydrides and metal organic framework materials can achieve this kind of ratio, they only work at extremes of temperature which are difficult to engineer into an ordinary vehicle.

“Our new material works at room temperature and at atmospheric pressure at the flick of a switch. Because it is made from a heavy metal (Rhodium), its weight to fuel ratio is low, 0.1 per cent, but it could certainly fill the time lag between a driver putting their foot on the accelerator and a metal hydride fuel tank getting up to temperature.

“We are really very excited about the potential this technology offers.”

The University of Bath researchers made the discovery whilst investigating the effect that hydrogen has on metals. Having constructed an organo-metallic compound containing six rhodium (a type of metal that is also currently found in catalytic converters in cars) atoms and 12 hydrogen atoms, they began studying the chemical properties of the complex with researchers in Oxford (UK) and Victoria (Canada).

They soon realised that the material would absorb two molecules of hydrogen at room temperature and atmospheric pressure – and would release the molecules when a small electric current was applied to the material.

This kind of take up and release at the atomic scale makes the material an ideal candidate for solving the hydrogen storage problem.

The researchers are now looking at ways of printing the material onto sheets that could be stacked together and encased to form a storage tank.

Potentially this tank could sit alongside a metal hydride tank and would kick into action as soon as the driver put their foot on the accelerator, giving the metal hydride store the time to heat up to 300°C - the temperature that normal petrol-powered engines run at.

“With the growing concern over climate change and our over-reliance on fossil fuels, hydrogen provides us with a useful alternative,” said Dr Weller.

“We have been able to use hydrogen to power fuel cells, which combine hydrogen and oxygen to form electricity and energy, for a number of years.

“But whenever the fuel is considered for cars we hit the stumbling block of how to store hydrogen gas in everyday applications.

“The new material absorbs the hydrogen into its structure and literally bristles with molecules of the gas. At the flick of a switch it rejects the hydrogen, allowing us to turn the supply of the gas on and off as we wish.

“The fact that we discovered the material by chance is a fantastic advertisement for the benefits of curiosity driven research.

“In principle it should be possible to produce ready amounts of hydrogen using sea water and solar cells, giving the next generation of vehicles an inexhaustible supply of environmentally-friendly fuel.

“In fact other research in Bath’s Department of Chemistry is at the forefront of the solar cell research, new battery technologies and new fuel cell technologies which could help unlock what many people are calling the hydrogen economy.

The research was initially funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council.

The researchers are now working on the first stages of the prototype, which involves printing the material onto a glass substrate. A further £500,000 grant to the Department of Chemistry has enabled Weller along with other researchers in the Department to buy two mass spectrometers which allows them to examine the molecular structure of the material.

Australia Will Host Distance Race 

 A team of staff and students from UCL (University College London) are competing in one of the world’s toughest engineering tests – the Panasonic World Solar Challenge. The biennial event sees teams build their own solar-powered cars and then race them over a gruelling 3000km course from Darwin to Adelaide.

Led by Dr Richard Bucknall and Dr Konrad Ciaramella from UCL’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, the UCL team has been responsible for every aspect of the SolarFox’s design and manufacture. Much of the chassis and suspension components were fabricated and welded in the department’s workshop, with only items such as the wheels, tyres and seat bought off the peg.

The body was designed in-house using the latest computer software and was manufactured using fibreglass by a specialist firm, Fibreglass Applications. The UCL team then carried out the laborious task of attaching 402 solar cells to the car. The solar array will produce approximately 1300 Watts in bright sunlight, which is sufficient power for the vehicle to obtain speeds of up to 120km per hour.

The race, which attracts competitors from top universities and research organisations from throughout the world, tests technologies which may help provide the solution to one of today’s most pressing issues, explains Dr Ciaramella: “Exploiting renewable energy sources is vital in the fight against pollution and automobiles are the source of 30 per cent of the nation’s smog-forming nitrogen. Solar-powered cars could reduce or even eliminate the automotive industry’s contribution towards air pollution and while practical solar cars remain a long way off, the continuing development of solar racing cars moves this technology one step closer to reality.”

The race is scheduled to finish on Sunday, by which time the teams will have traversed some of Australia’s most remote and hostile environments, including Glendambo – population 30; annual rainfall 185mm.

What Does the Future Holds Hydrogen Vehicles?

 Carnegie Mellon University's David S. Sholl is working to identify new materials that would help make hydrogen more stable and cost-efficient than fossil fuels. Increased concern about global warming and a need to conserve natural fuel sources prompted Carnegie Mellon researchers to find new, lightweight, low-cost hydrogen-storage materials.

"We are currently studying the use of metal hydrides, such as alanates and borohydrides, to find materials that could ultimately improve the efficiency of hydrogen cars and curb pollution," said Sholl, a professor of chemical engineering.

Essentially, what Sholl and his research team are trying to do is create a new material that will store larger amounts of hydrogen than can be held in a compressed gas tank, but will still be able to easily release the hydrogen to feed the fuel cell for cars of the future. Hydrogen-powered cars run on fuel cells that combine hydrogen and oxygen from the air to produce electricity. The only waste emitted is water.

By contrast, engines that burn gasoline emit pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, that cause global warming. U.S. vehicles consume 383 million gallons of gasoline a day -- or about 140 billion gallons annually. That's about two-thirds of the total national oil consumption, half of which is imported from overseas.

"Hydrogen can potentially be produced from domestic resources without emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is an attractive vision for a future fuel source," said Sholl, whose research is funded by the Department of Energy and performed in collaboration with Professor Karl Johnson from the University of Pittsburgh.

Once hydrogen is produced, transporting and storing it becomes a problem. As a gas, it requires a lot of energy to compress into a volume small enough to fit into a car. Sholl said that his research has used computational methods to screen a large number of possible storage materials, leapfrogging what could have been a decade of work to test the same materials in the lab.

Breakthrough in Hydrogen Research would be positive For Carbon-free Cars

 A new breakthrough in hydrogen storage technology could remove a key barrier to widespread uptake of non-polluting cars that produce no carbon dioxide emissions.

UK scientists have developed a compound of the element lithium which may make it practical to store enough hydrogen on-board fuel-cell-powered cars to enable them to drive over 300 miles before refuelling. Achieving this driving range is considered essential if a mass market for fuel cell cars is to develop in future years, but has not been possible using current hydrogen storage technologies.

Fuel cells produce carbon-free electricity by harnessing electrochemical reactions between hydrogen and oxygen. However, today's prototype and demonstration fuel-cell-powered cars only have a range of around 200 miles. To achieve a 300 mile driving range, an on-board space the size of a double-decker bus would be needed to store hydrogen gas at standard temperature and pressure, while storing it as a compressed gas in cylinders or as a liquid in storage tanks would not be practical due to the weight and size implications.

The UK-SHEC research has therefore focused on a different approach which could enable hydrogen to be stored at a much higher density and within acceptable weight limits. The option involves a well-established process called 'chemisorption', in which atoms of a gas are absorbed into the crystal structure of a solid-state material and then released when needed.

The team has tested thousands of solid-state compounds in search of a light, cheap, readily available material which would enable the absorption/desorption process to take place rapidly and safely at typical fuel cell operating temperatures. They have now produced a variety of lithium hydride (specifically Li4BN3H10) that could offer the right blend of properties. Development work is now needed to further investigate the potential of this powder.

"This could be a major step towards the breakthrough that the fuel cell industry and the transport sector have waited for," says UK-SHEC's Project Co-ordinator Professor Peter Edwards of the University of Oxford. "It's due to SUPERGEN's vision of combining many of the leading groups in the UK to tackle this, arguably the biggest challenge for the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. This work could make a key contribution to helping fuel cell cars become viable for mass-manufacture within around 10 years."

Fuel cells are a key technology which could assist the emergence of a 'hydrogen energy economy' that uses hydrogen, rather than carbon-based fossil fuels, as its main energy carrier. They offer particular potential in the transport sector, which is a major source of the carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion that are the main contributor to climate change. An average new petrol-fuelled car currently produces over 3 tonnes of CO2 a year.

A major report in 2004 concluded that using hydrogen in vehicles could, on its own, enable the UK to meet its Kyoto targets for CO2 reductions ('A Strategic Framework for Hydrogen Energy', published by Etech, Element Energy and Eoin Lees Energy).

 Energy-Saving Technology for Future Cars on The Way

 Mechanical and electrical engineers at DaimlerChrysler, General Motors and BMW have jointly developed a hybrid-vehicle technology that shuts the internal combustion engine off when the vehicle stops. Meanwhile, engineers are working to replace the platinum in fuel cells with cheaper materials, which could lead to viable hydrogen cars.

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- The high cost of hybrids has kept many people from going green, and a new Edmonds.com study shows that with the cost of gas -- combined with tax credits -- it only takes about three years to break even.

Now a new breed of hybrid is going to lessen that time even more. It's the brainchild of not one car company but DaimlerChrysler, General Motors and BMW! They are all working together to create the car of tomorrow.

As gas prices go up, the pressure is on to create cars that use less.

"The hybrid system that we're developing, we can apply to any vehicle that we have," Glenn Denomme, a chief engineer of Hybrid Powertrain Programs at DaimlerChrysler in Auburn Hills, Michigan, tells DBIS.

It allows for increased performance compared to a conventional SUV and improves fuel economy by up to 25 percent. Denomme says, "You can still haul your cargo, but you can still be environmentally sound too."

Today's hybrid works best in stop-and-go traffic -- tomorrow's hybrid will give you better fuel economy, not only in the city, but on the highway. When the new hybrid is stopped, the advanced system shuts the internal combustion engine off, conserving fuel. When the car starts to move, electric power is used to conserve fuel, adding power from the engine as needed.

Speeding up even more, power from both the engine and electric motors are routed to the wheels for greater acceleration.

The new technology doesn't stop there! A fuel cell car is 100-percent electric.

"It takes hydrogen and oxygen, combines it to form water, and at the same time produces electricity," says Doanh Tran, an advanced vehicle engineer with DaimlerChrysler’s Fuel Cell Vehicles & Technologies.

Hydrogen can be produced from just about anything that has a hydrogen molecule, and the car has no emission out of the tailpipe except water vapor.

Right now, platinum is used for the fuel cell’s parts and is expensive, but materials engineers are working to find new metals. And as for mileage, it gets 56 miles per gallon, so a little can go a long way.

Automotive Engineers View Plastic As The Future For Advanced Designs

 New materials for car bodies may soon transform the auto industry. Auto engineers can mold these carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics into virtually any shape. The materials are both strong and light -- increasing fuel efficiency and safety at the same time.

TROY, Mich.-- Cars built entirely out of plastic could be the wave of the future, making metal a thing of the past when it comes to cars.

New, innovative cars made almost entirely of plastic are paving the way for what you may be driving in the future. Guan Chew, a mechanical engineer at Porsche Engineering Services in Troy, Mich., says, "With plastics you can design cars which are very bold, and that gives you an advantage to sell nicer cars."

Plastics have gained a lot of ground over traditional metals used in cars, making it possible to build almost an entire vehicle completely of non-metal material. Paul Ritchie, CEO and engineer at Porsche Engineering Services, says: "The Carrera GT is what we would refer to as a proving ground for one of our new materials. It's made essentially from reinforced plastic."

Mechanical engineers use a lightweight, high-strength aerospace material called carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic. It's used in the doors, hoods, fenders, chasis and also in support frames for the engine and transmission.

"You can mold the plastics into very complicated shapes that maybe you can't do in steel," Chew says. Looks aren't the only perks of plastic; plastics help cars lose weight to go farther on fuel.

Automotive Designers Test Possibilities Offered by New Materials

 New plastics may soon replace metals in auto bodies. Designers are beginning to discover a whole new world of possibilities offered by materials that can be bent into futuristic shapes.

DETROIT--Imaginations are let loose on car designs of the future. Now, young, creative minds are pushing automotive design to its limits, using every shape, color and size in their creations.

Designers and engineers who take their dreams and turn them into reality create these new cars of the future.

Chris Piscitelli's zest for cars started when he was just a kid. "My father is an old car enthusiast, so I grew up around it." Piscitelli is a design student at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. As he got older, he learned his love of cars could be linked with his artistic talent.

"I have a passion for cars and design, so it was just natural for me to get into automotive design," Piscitelli says.

Now, Chris is part of a future generation of car designers learning to put new materials to use in exciting, futuristic ways. "We're supposed to stress the use of a lot of the new plastics and things that you do with plastics that you couldn't necessarily do with say, you know, steel," Piscitelli tells Ivanhoe.

Plastic is easy to mold so using materials engineering, Chris used the advantages of plastic by heating it so the long, spaghetti-like molecules slide over each other to form new shapes, giving us durable, cost-effective, lightweight plastics with sleek curves.

Jim Kolb, vice president of American Plastics Council in Troy says, "The limitations that some metals have in forming parts -- are overcome with the use of plastics."

Plastic concepts have caught the eye of car companies who see the future of car design in students like Piscitelli. "We're able to push the limit with the project, and so to make something that was, you know, kind of futuristic and, you know, out there, but also could be seen on the road," Piscitelli says. His concept car may not be road-ready right now, but it's a nice sneak peak at what the future holds.

Alternative fuels are derived from resources other than petroleum. Some are produced domestically, reducing our dependence on imported oil, and some are derived from renewable sources. Often, they produce less pollution than gasoline or diesel.

To promote alternative fuels, the Federal government offers tax incentives to consumers purchasing qualifying alternative fuel vehicles.

Hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs) combine the benefits of gasoline engines and electric motors and can be configured to obtain different objectives, such as improved fuel economy, increased power, or additional auxiliary power for electronic devices and power tools.

Some of the advanced technologies typically used by hybrids include

Regenerative Braking. The electric motor applies resistance to the drivetrain causing the wheels to slow down. In return, the energy from the wheels turns the motor, which functions as a generator, converting energy normally wasted during coasting and braking into electricity, which is stored in a battery until needed by the electric motor.

Electric Motor Drive/Assist. The electric motor provides additional power to assist the engine in accelerating, passing, or hill climbing. This allows a smaller, more efficient engine to be used. In some vehicles, the motor alone provides power for low-speed driving conditions where internal combustion engines are least efficient.

Automatic Start/Shutoff. Automatically shuts off the engine when the vehicle comes to a stop and restarts it when the accelerator is pressed. This prevents wasted energy from idling.

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