Major research and development efforts are aimed at making these vehicles and their infrastructure practical for widespread use. This has led to the rollout of light-duty production vehicles to retail consumers, as well as the initial implementation of medium- and heavy-duty buses and trucks in California and fleet availability in northeastern states.
Hydrogen is considered an alternative fuel under the Energy Policy Act of The interest in hydrogen as an alternative transportation fuel stems from its ability to power fuel cells in zero-emission vehicles, its potential for domestic production, and the fuel cell's fast filling time and high efficiency.
In fact, a fuel cell coupled with an electric motor is two to three times more efficient than an internal combustion engine running on gasoline.
Hydrogen can also serve as fuel for internal combustion engines. However, unlike FCEVs, these produce tailpipe emissions and are less efficient. Learn more about fuel cells. The energy in 2. Because hydrogen has a low volumetric energy density, it is stored onboard a vehicle as a compressed gas to achieve the driving range of conventional vehicles. Most current applications use high-pressure tanks capable of storing hydrogen at either 5, or 10, pounds per square inch psi.
Hydrogen and fuel cell technologies provide cost effective and environmentally friendly solutions to improving our energy needs. Hydrogen is an energy storage medium. Energy, stored as hydrogen in the form of a gas or a liquid, will never dissipate until it is used, making it a good application for emergency generators and other mission critical energy applications. Compare that to other energy storage types like batteries and capacitors which lose the energy stored in them over time and need to be periodically recharged even without use.
This fast charging time means that hydrogen powered vehicles provide the same flexibility as conventional cars. Hydrogen fuel cells do not produce noise pollution like other sources of renewable energy, such as wind power. This also means that, much like electric cars, hydrogen powered vehicles are much quieter than those that use conventional internal combustion engines.
Some low-carbon energy sources, including wind energy and biofuel power plants can be an eyesore, however, hydrogen fuel cells do not have the same space requirements, meaning that there is less visual pollution too.
Hydrogen fuel cells offer greater efficiencies with regard to usage times. A hydrogen vehicle has the same range as those that use fossil fuels around miles. Hydrogen fuel cells are also not significantly impacted by the outside temperature and do not deteriorate in cold weather, unlike EVs. This advantage is increased further when coupled with the short charging times. Where local conditions allow, the availability of hydrogen through local generation and storage could prove to be an alternative to diesel-based power and heating in remote areas.
Not only will this reduce the need to transport fuels but will also improve the lives of those living in distant regions by offering a non-polluting fuel obtain from a readily-available natural resource. As the technology advances, hydrogen fuel cells will be able to provide energy for a range stationary and mobile applications.
Hydrogen powered vehicles are just one example, but it could also be used in smaller applications such as domestic products as well as larger scale heating systems. Similar to ICE powerplants, the functions of energy storage capacity ie. Hydrogen fuel cells have the potential to reduce the dependency of a nation on fossil fuels, which will help democratise energy and power supplies around the world.
This increased independence will prove a benefit for many countries who are currently reliant on fossil fuel supply. Of course, this will also avoid the problem of rising fossil fuel prices as stocks reduce.
TWI has a great deal of experience and expertise in the power generation sector and you can find out more about this here. TWI is part of a consortium that has completed a two-year collaborative project that successfully developed a condition monitoring technique to improve the safety of hydrogen fuel storage tanks.
Read more. TWI has adapted its existing high-pressure hydrogen testing facility to enable these tests to be performed routinely, by developing automated control software to carry out the incremental load increase and hold durations while monitoring the DCPD signal throughout the test. For all the many advantages of hydrogen fuel cells, there are still a few disadvantages and challenges to address:. Despite being the most abundant element in the Universe, hydrogen does not exist on its own so needs to be extracted from water via electrolysis or separated from carbon fossil fuels.
Both of these processes require a significant amount of energy to achieve. This energy can be more than that gained from the hydrogen itself as well as being expensive. In addition, this extraction typically requires the use of fossil fuels, which in the absence of CCS undermines the green credentials of hydrogen.
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