Say what you will about the 10-15 year forecasts for hydrogen fuel that we’ve been hearing about the last 10-15 years — but slowly but surely, we’re starting to see some progress on infrastructure.
The UK is set to unveil its first hydrogen fuel station today at Birmingham University. The school is conducting trials with a fleet of five fuel-cell vehicles. Another three stations are planned for London in the coming months – with a goal of 12 countrywide by 2010. Not enough to get too excited about, but certainly a start. From the article,
Professor Kevin Kendall, Head of the research team, said, “It is absolutely necessary that we have the means to refuel our fleet of hydrogen-powered cars so that we can carry out our research project into the feasibility of hydrogen in a transport context.” Air Products installed the fuel station and also recently announced that it is working with Transport for London (TfL) to build fuel stations for a fleet of 70 hydrogen-powered vehicles being introduced from next year.
TfL’s vehicles will be a mixture of buses, vans, cars and motorcycles that will be used by TfL staff, the police and the fire brigade, with London’s first hydrogen station set to open next year at a bus garage in East London.
Of course, championing hydrogen as a clean, green fuel is still immature at best. The process that creates the fuel is still highly energy intensive. With every kilogram of hydrogen produced, 9.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide is also created. Would it make the world more sustainable? Absolutely. But until we figure out how to generate it in a green fashion, it’s still not the golden ticket to our fuel problems.
A new fuel cell boiler has been developed by British Gas that could end up turning homes across the UK into mini-power stations. About 30 households will participate in a trial of the technology — which uses a combination of heat and power to generate electricity and simultaneously heat a home using natural gas. Yes, that’s right — this technology is still tied to a fossil-fuel. But it’s efficiency over a standard boiler (up to a quarter off the bill of a home with a modern condensing system) is certainly welcome. From the article,
Instead of burning gas like a condensing boiler, this new machine passes gas through a fuel cell in a chemical process that creates heat and electricity simultaneously. In other words, it turns your home into a micro generator of electricity. That also means your boiler will sometimes be generating more electricity than you’re using, in which case you’d be able to export that back to the national grid. We asked British Gas whether it would guarantee to buy back the home-generated electricity, but it said it hadn’t yet made a decision.
Prices are not yet determined, but analysts are saying something between $5K and $6K. Savings made by the new machines are expected to pay back the premium within five years. While I’d prefer something a bit more renewable, it’s still encouraging to see efficiency and innovation occurring in home heating and energy generation. For more, jump here.
via smart planet
We’ve all heard of alternative sources of energy from sunlight, water, and wind — but how about blood? An inventor by the name of Jim Mielke has created a bluetooth-ready, wireless, blood-fueled display that uses tiny microscopic spheres, somewhat similar to tattoo ink, to display images. Here’s how it works:
The basis of the 2×4-inch “Digital Tattoo Interface” is a Bluetooth device made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone. It´s inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, and then it unfurls beneath the skin to align between skin and muscle. Through the same incision, two small tubes on the device are attached to an artery and a vein to allow the blood to flow to a coin-sized blood fuel cell that converts glucose and oxygen to electricity. After blood flows in from the artery to the fuel cell, it flows out again through the vein.
While inserting anything under my skin makes me somewhat squeamish, for those with tattoos — the ability to erase your ex-girlfriend’s name in favor a new one might be a God send. It gets better though — the top surface also enables touch-screen control. Check your forearm for incoming calls or get an update on the weather. As long as the blood is flowing, the display can communicate with other wireless bluetooth devices outside or within the body. Tap a small dot on your skin to make the whole thing disappear. Cool, right?
While the potential for entertainment purposes is huge, first and foremost is the ability to monitor health and blood disorders. While only still a concept, this could prove to be an invaluable resource for those with diabetes and other diseases. I’m just curious to know where they’ll put the headphone jack…
via Physorg
Cars are not friends of the environment, however many people can’t do without them. Having just moved to a place in the US with limited public transport, it has become apparent that some people just cannot do without. Thanks to high (well, higher than they’re used to) gasoline prices in the US, vehicle manufacturers have finally woken up to the fact that in order to sell more cars they’re going to have to produce ones that are cheaper to run and own. That usually means alternative fuel vehicles, but what are the options?
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When most people think of E.coli, the first thing that comes to mind is tainted food. It would be fair to assume that the last thing we would expect is its potential to provide cheap, clean hydrogen for America’s energy future. Thomas Wood, a professor in Texas A&M University’s Chemical Engineering department has discovered that when properly ‘tweaked’ at the DNA level, E.coli produces substantial amounts of hydrogen. Specifically, Wood’s strain produces 140 times more hydrogen than is created in a naturally occurring process.
Of course, there are plenty of research hurdles left before his work can go commercial; but the results are encouraging. “One of the most difficult things about chemical engineering is how you get the product,” Wood explained. “In this case, it’s very easy because the hydrogen is a gas, and it just bubbles out of the solution. You just catch the gas as it comes out of the glass. That’s it. You have pure hydrogen.”
Wood also believes hydrogen-producing E.coli would solve another environmental hurdle associated with the technology: the infrastructure needed to support it. With bacteria, he believes the hydrogen production could occur on site. This would drastically increase the safety of hydrogen production; as opposed to trucking the fuel across the United States. It would also work for your home. From the article,
“Take your house, for example,” Wood said. “The size of the reactor that we’d need today if we implemented this technology would be less than the size of a 250-gallon fuel tank found in the typical east-coast home. I’m not finished with this yet, but at this point if we implemented the technology right now, you or a machine would have to shovel in about the weight of a man every day so that the reactor could provide enough hydrogen to take care of the average American home for a 24-hour period.
“We’re trying to make bacteria so it’s doesn’t require 80 kilograms; it will be closer to 8 kilograms.”
Sounds good to me. My propane bills are killing me. Hit the jump for more details.
It remains to be seen how environmentally-friendly the fuel cell revolution will be. As far as I can tell, the largest question-mark will center around proper disposal of the Li-ion batteries. One thing is for sure, almost all the major electronic manufacturers have something planned in the coming years to take advantage of the technology.
Above is NEC’s newly announced ‘Flask’ cell phone. The handset features a touchscreen display and what appears to be a valve to potentially recharge the handset once the fuel has all been used. We have no idea if the chemical reaction will require pure water; or plain tap. There may be something more to this entire product line than what we see in just the photos. For the time being, we’re left waiting for more — and hoping we can actually carry them on an airplane. 
via thegadgetblog
Conventional diesel generators are the de facto portable when it comes to providing electricity on the go. The downsides are noise, pollution — and the fact that you really can only use them outside (or where properly ventilated.) Change, however, is coming.
As a recent CNET article shed light on on the future of generators with a look at a ‘practical consumer fuel cell’ from Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies called the HydraPak. Using replaceable solid fuel cartridges and water, it produces up to 25-watts of energy. In total, when fully refueled you’ll get about 270 watt-hours of energy through the HydroPak’s standard 110V AC power outlet and two auxiliary USB power jacks. According to the author, that’s enough energy to fully charge a laptop 5-10 times; and when you’re out in the field, lugging around an extra 4lbs (weight of the unit) for the convenience-factor might be worth it. It’s a lot better than carrying a diesel generator. Of course, this is first generation tech, so there’s still some short-comings to fix. From the article,
It seems to me that what the HydroPak really needs is a high-power DC output–a traditional 12V cigarette-lighter jack or perhaps the Anderson Powerpole, which has become the standard 12V power connector in the amateur-radio field. It would be especially valuable if the HydroPak could charge standard 12V car batteries or smaller gel-cell batteries, because then an AC power inverter could be connected to produce much more than 25 watts of output power for shorter periods of time.
Not to mention this thing cost $400 and $20 for a fuel cell cartridge. That’s about $74 per killowatt-hour!
You’ll need a little over a pint of water to create the chemical reaction — but it needn’t be pure; and salt water is a-ok. One question mark still remaining is the integrity of the packaging for the fuel cells. They contain a “corrosive, mildly hazardous chemical” which when securely sealed is fine. However, once the cartridge has expired, I’m hoping the company might include postage-paid packaging to return them for recycling. The last thing we need are these ending up in landfills. In the future, perhaps we’ll even see expended fuel cell cartridges be accepted at curbside recycling pickup.
For the full details — and some great commentary on where this portable technology is headed — hit the CNET article.
While details are light on this concept vehicle from the Morgan Motor Company, we can say from the get-go that the styling is indicative of those in the upper-class looking for a bit more Bentley in their green cars and a lot less Volt.
According to the site, the Life Car will be introduced at the 2008 Geneva Auto Show. The objective of the company is to introduce a zero-emissions vehicle that is also fun to drive. We had absolutely no idea that they weren’t. Thank God someone thought of this. From the article,
Going far beyond the incremental adaptation of traditional car designs as seen in current hybrid vehicles, it will demonstrate that a new step in vehicle architecture is enabled by the use of a fuel cell hybrid power train.
The approach is one of whole system design in which the architecture is generated from the characteristics of the fuel cell, in a light-weight vehicle coupled with a high hybridization level. This combination will minimise the fuel cell cost and provide the fuel economy for a 200 mile range.”
Apparently, one of their additional goals is to lower the entry barriers for a vehicle powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. We’re all for that as long as we can also solve the energy costs associated with producing the fuel in the first place.
Check out the site for additional photos. We’ll know more in March!
General Motors has made a splash for the first time at the Consumer Electronics Show by introducing a new concept Cadillac called the Provoq. “If the automobile were invented today, I’m pretty sure it would debut here at CES,” said GM boss Rick Wagoner. And certainly, the automaker came dressed to impress with a concept car that pretty much makes you believe flying vehicles are around the corner. What’s included? Here’s a little breakdown:
Like the fuel-cell powered Chevy Sequel, the Provoq relies on three electric motors–one mounted between the front wheels, in-wheel motors in each of the rear wheels–to power the car, which can apparently drive 300 miles on a single fill of hydrogen and 20 miles on battery electric energy alone. Unlike the Sequel, the Provoq can be charged from a standard A/C outlet via one of two charging ports in each of its front fenders. Other innovative features of the vehicle include a solar cell in the roof to assist with powering onboard electronics; an “active” front grille, with grille louvers that open when the fuel cell requires cooling and close at high speed to reduce drag; and shift- and brake-by-wire system.
Of course, beyond the hype — GM execs were quick to remind that in order for cars like these to make it on the road, major advances in lithium-ion batteries must first take place. Oh yea, and that whole “hydrogen infrastructure” thingy too. Damn details. Cool car.
For a great video of the car, check out AutoBlogGreen’s coverage here.
In a bold move that quickly answers the chicken or egg question of a hydrogen future, Honda has decided to place the worlds first hydrogen fuel cell car into production next year.
Called the FCX, the vehicle will initially be available in the United States and Japan for a retail price around $100,000. The car will travel an estimated 270 miles at speeds of up to 100mph and will produce only water vapor from its exhaust. It’s an amazing thing to see such a vehicle actually be offered for sale, but the price and scarcity of hydrogen filling stations will mean sightings and practical use will be nil. Honda is planning on introducing a “Home Energy Station” to deal with the latter. Still currently in development, the unit might be hooked up to a person’s domestic gas supply to produce hot water and electricity for the house as well as hydrogen for the car.
Honda’s president and chief executive, Takeo Fukui, shed some light on the company’s decision to push the car into production saying, When the car was invented, countries werent full of petrol stations, said Fukui in response to questions about the lack of infrastructure. When the demand is there it [the hydrogen economy] will happen.
Fukui also had some words for Toyota’s upcoming Prius plug-in models. Carrying a [mains rechargeable] battery [as well as an engine] is dead weight, said Fukui, adding that Toyotas enthusiasm for plug-ins was fuelled by the desire to be able to use more mains electricity produced by US-sourced coal rather than imported oil. It is highly political, said Fukui, but, technically speaking its nonsense.
Interesting. So I guess we can expect Honda to skip plug-in technology completely so as not to become part of some political conspiracy? I think Fukui should be careful not to jump ahead five spaces and forget the allure of a car that’s both affordable and gets even higher mileage than today’s standard hybrids. I’m not denying the beauty of hydrogen — but it’s definitely not a perfect solution and has a long road to travel to practicality.
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