tagged w/ Fuel Cell
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Schatz Energy Research Center engineers prepare a fuel cell test station for the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology in the United Arab Emirates.Schatz Energy Research Center engineers prepare a fuel cell test station for the... more
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From May 18th to May 22nd in Berllin Tempelhof, 180 cars displayed, electric vehicles, prototypes, fuel cell vehicles.
Follow the link in the video below for our coverage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWBgG9t3teUFrom May 18th to May 22nd in Berllin Tempelhof, 180 cars displayed, electric vehicles,... more
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Honda's fuel cell electric car, the FCX Clarity, can go about 240 miles on a tank of hydrogen fuel. Compared with gasoline, that's about 60 miles to the gallon. The only emission is water so pure you could drink it.
The company has been building a limited number of these cars since 2005, so Honda was surprised when Secretary of Energy Steven Chu claimed it would take four technological miracles to make fuel cell cars viable in the marketplace.
"Simply put, he's wrong on those points. He has bad advice," Honda's Steve Ellis said at one of southeast Michigan's few hydrogen fueling stations. "Automakers are not foolish. We're not going to invest in technology that we see as a dead end."
The Clarity costs $600 a month to lease, but if you add in all of Honda's research and development costs, each one is probably worth tens of millions of dollars. Ellis says the costs are coming down, though — from the hydrogen fuel, which is made from natural gas, to the cost of the fuel cells. Producing them in volume will really bring the costs down, he says.
"Ten years ago, if we were looking under this hood, it would be like duct tape and baling wires," he says. "So it was all an engineering exercise. This car, we're handing the keys to customers, saying, 'Here's your car, see you in six months. Nothing to see here folks.' "
But the keys are being given only to people in southern California, where there's a cluster of hydrogen fueling stations, built with the help of state subsidies. Even if Chu changes his mind about the miracles, the price tag remains a problem.
Oliver Hazimeh of the management consulting firm PRTM says battery electric cars like the Volt and the Leaf are getting cheaper faster, which is why batteries are getting the nod from the government.
"By 2015, even five years from now, you will probably get a Nissan Leaf-type vehicle on the battery side for probably $25,000," he says. "That same vehicle in the fuel cell configuration will probably still be $45,000 to $50,000."
But fuel cell proponents say that's not a fair competition. The government spent more on battery electrics in just the past two years than it did on fuel cells over the past decade. James Warner, director of policy at the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association, says cutting funding sends the wrong message to car companies developing fuel cell cars like Honda, GM, Toyota, Daimler and Hyundai.
"By all accounts, they are ready to commercialize these vehicles by 2015," he says.
Warner has a bigger worry than less federal funding. Under a continuing budget resolution, Chu has no mandate to spend anything at all on fuel cell technology.
"The secretary if he so chose could end these programs today," he says.
A statement from Chu suggests he is likely to stick with President Obama's proposed budget, which cuts research and development by about half, but eliminates funding for the commercialization of fuel cell cars. That means it could take even longer for people who don't live in southern California to get a hydrogen fuel cell car to drive.Honda's fuel cell electric car, the FCX Clarity, can go about 240 miles on a tank... more
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CCM News New York - The seventh edition of Eco-Trek - one of the first ever syndicated green online news magazines and presented by German actress Anita Anthonj- is now available for download and re-publishing for websites, newspapers, and magazines. For more information please contact: info@ccm-news.com
On this week's episode, Eco-Trek visits green projects alongside the Hydrogen Highway in California. In California there are more hydrogen filling stations than anywhere in the US.
Joshua Jackson Joins the Mercedes-Benz F-CELL World Drive: Fringe star Joshua Jackson joined the Mercedes-Benz F-CELL world Tour in California for a test drive of the all-electric Hydrogen fuel Mercedes-Benz B-Class F-Cell and gives us his initial driving impressions.
Bottle Village in Los Angeles:
Grandma Prisbey's Bottle Village is a protected landmark with structures built out of recycled bottles. It is an impressive expression of transforming discarded items and sorrow into something more. Bottle Village -- so it says on its website - is not only a one of a kind, quirky, fun, village but is a brilliant approach to recycling and shed making. Bottle Village is also a bold and personal statement to the importance of the creative act in everyday life.
Portrait: Dr. David Blekham -- Professor at California State University:
Dr. David Blekham, is an expert in the production of hydrogen. His has a hands-on approach to teaching and his students have built a fuel cell powered racer that will compete with other alternatively powered cars in a race this year. Dr. Blekham took the initiative for the university to build a hydrogen fueling station right on campus.
A cool green invention: The Sporting Sail
While looking for fireworks in their grandfather's attic, Nick and Billy Smith stumbled upon a strange piece of fabric. They learned that this "ski clipper" was used by their grandfather as a mini parachute, helping him slow down on steep ski slopes. As dedicated snowboarders themselves, Nick and Billy figured that what grandpa used for skiing was perfect for their own sport. So they began experimenting with the kite-like device . They perfected it, called it sporting sail, and patented it. Watch the story.CCM News New York - The seventh edition of Eco-Trek - one of the first ever syndicated... more
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ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2011) — Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a biohybrid photoconversion system -- based on the interaction of photosynthetic plant proteins with synthetic polymers -- that can convert visible light into hydrogen fuel.ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2011) — Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak... more
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An electricity-generating fuel-cell system known as the Bloom Box sparked a huge buzz in the energy debate six months ago — and since then, still more ventures have surfaced to promise better living through chemistry.
Will future fuel cells make good on those promises? We should know in the next couple of years.
One of the concepts, detailed on Monday at an American Chemical Society meeting in Boston, combines the environmental friendliness of solar power with the 24/7 capability of fuel-cell generation. When the sun shines, electricity from solar panels would feed into a personal power grid, and also split water into hydrogen and oxygen. When the sun isn't out, the hydrogen and oxygen can be recombined to keep the electricity flowing, producing pure water in the process.
"Our goal is to make each home its own power system," Daniel Nocera, a chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained in a news release discussing the system. "We're working toward development of 'personalized' energy units that can be manufactured, distributed and installed inexpensively. There certainly are major obstacles to be overcome — existing fuel cells and solar cells must be improved, for instance. Nevertheless, one can envision villages in India and Africa not long from now purchasing an affordable basic system."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38817952/ns/technology_and_science-future_of_energy/An electricity-generating fuel-cell system known as the Bloom Box sparked a huge buzz... more
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In the past few days, numerous stories have focused on Bloom Energy’s technology, its costs, and whether its technology will eventually arrive in the home. In many ways, all of these stories have missed the forest for the trees.
Bloom Energy’s value proposition boils down to one simple statement: customers are virtually guaranteed to save money.
Consider: at least in California, customers can buy a Bloom box for between $700,000 and $800,000 or so, and generate electricity for about 9 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (with about 9 cents per kWh going to the costs of the Bloom Box versus and additional 5 kWh to pay for the fuel, natural gas, according to Lux Research). Versus a utility cost of between 13 and 14 cents per kWh, customers should be able to pay back the cost of the Bloom Box in between 3 to 5 years. This has all been well reported.
But for some reason, Bloom has not called a great deal of attention to its service contract, which covers the cost of maintenance and upgrades. How long will the individual fuel cells last before they need to be replaced? To a customer, it doesn’t matter. How many fuel cells will need to be replaced over the life of its server? Again, it’s an irrelevant question. If something breaks, Bloom fixes it, for free. If something needs replacing, Bloom takes care of it. It’s why so may top-tier companies were on stage backing Bloom.
A customer like Wal-Mart needs an ironclad guarantee before it can
commit to a new technology. Coca-Cola, Federal Express, Google, and
Staples are no different. But Bloom is selling them an on-campus power source that the
company is virtually guaranteeing will pay for itself in as little as
three years, and will last through ten. What’s not to like?
What’s the downside risk? Two far-fetched possibilities, in my mind:
first, that the price of electricity will decrease, invalidating the
investment, and two, that the Bloom fuel cells will crumble back into
powder before the warranty has expired. Neither seems likely.
It’s worth pointing out that a number of companies compete with Bloom in
the solid-oxide fuel-cell space: the U.K.’s Ceres Power began
production late last year, and Australia’s Ceramic Fuel Cells is also
selling units to customers. In the U.S., ClearEdge is ramping toward
production, as is Acumentrics. But in KR Sridhar, Bloom has the sort of
charismatic, slightly arrogant chief executive that Silicon Valley types
seem to adore.
Also somewhat lost in the shuffle: Bloom’s green-power credentials are a
bit flimsy. Solid-oxide fuel cells produce carbon dioxide, and Bloom’s
server produces 773 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour. According to state
emissions data compiled by the EPA’s
eGrid database (and sourced by Forbes,
in a nice examination of the numbers behind Bloom) the electricity
produced by California’s own grid is 540 pounds/MWH – substantially less
than the CO2 output generated by the Bloom technology. Only when you
move a Bloom box out of California does its green credibility reemerge;
New York’s grid, for example, generates 828 lb/MWh. A state like
Arizona, which most likely would embrace solar, generates 1,158 lb/MWh.
Ironically, California’s electricity prices are some of the highest in
the nation, so the Bloom servers make less sense outside of the Golden
State’s borders.
There’s also something to be said for the simplicity of what Bloom is
selling. Solarbuzz.com
surveys the price of solar modulators, batteries, inverters,
regulators each month, and derives a price for a typical installation.
For a pair of 50-kilowatt solar arrays (individually priced at about
$313,710) a 100-kilowatt solar array would total about $617,000,
slightly less than a Bloom server. However, the price in kWh is also
higher — 25.03 cents per kWh, under perpetually sunny skies — because a
solar panel can’t produce power during the night.
But the Solarbuzz survey also can't always take into account the
variance in solar exposure, retail prices, taxation, and rebates, among
other factors — variables that a CFO would have to factor in. And there's the space savings, too: even across
the sprawling campuses of corporate Silicon Valley, a roof-mounted solar
array might not be able to power an entire building.
Incidentally, potential customers might want to take a look at Bloom’s
temperature tolerances. The Bloom servers can withstand temperature
ranges of 0 degrees to 40 degrees centigrade – just 32 degrees to 104
degrees Fahrenheit. In San Jose, where temperatures barely
topped 100 last year, only a record heat wave would push the Bloom
box over its limit. (I'm assuming cold weather would be less of an
issue, since a Bloom box should be able to be installed indoors, where a
vent could disburse the carbon dioxide.)
But even though an “extreme weather kit” is available (an umbrella?) the
temperature limitations would seem to rule out Sacramento, where the
Sacramento Municipal Utility District already offers its customers
shares in a solar array it operates. And doesn’t a constant, home-grown
supply of power make the most sense during a heat wave, when brownouts
are common? In retrospect, February was a great time to launch: not too
hot, not too cold.
But for the customer, the bottom line is the bottom line.
I spoke with T.J. Rodgers, an engineer, chief executive of Cypress
Semiconductor, and a Bloom board member, where I asked about the service
contract. Does it matter if a fuel cell fails? What does the service
contract say? “It doesn’t matter,” Rodgers said. “All I pay for is the
fuel.”
If they were smart, Bloom’s sales executives will use the same line in
future contracts. I overheard Scott Sandell, a partner with New
Enterprise Associates and a Bloom board member, telling another VC that
Bloom soon hopes to sign a contract with a customer that will “make the
company”. Sandell also pointed out, publicly, that Bloom’s costs have dropped by more than 25 times since 2004, with the implications that they’ll drop further.
In some ways, whether or not Bloom can ever lower the price low enough to install a home unit is irrelevant. What’s important is that it can meet the demand from its enterprise customers, and avoid running into manufacturing glitches. (We still don’t know where Bloom manufactures its fuel cells.)
Bloom’s pitch should be that its servers are like buying a
luxury car: with all scheduled maintenance guaranteed, plus a warranty,
all customers have to supply is the fuel.
http://goo.gl/fb/1z5xIn the past few days, numerous stories have focused on Bloom Energy’s... more
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After years of secrecy, Bloom Energy today finally unveiled the Bloom Energy Server, better known as the Bloom Box. It uses novel fuel cell technology to produce electricity from a combination of oxygen, heat and a fuel source like natural gas or biogas, and it is small enough to sit relatively inconspicuously on company property.
The device, already in use at eBay, Google and several other company campuses and distribution centers, has been hyped as a potential game-changer in the energy and power generation conversation.
Whether or not it ever gets down to the anticipated price tag of around $3,000 and becomes viable on a residential scale, the Bloom Box raises questions of what type of energy future we should be planning for. ...
http://solveclimate.com/blog/20100224/does-bloom-box-signal-shift-toward-decentralized-electricity-generationAfter years of secrecy, Bloom Energy today finally unveiled the Bloom Energy Server,... more
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Bloom Energy, a Sunnyvale startup that has been working for years on a fuel cell that would allow homes and businesses to generate their own electricity, officially unveiled its so-called Bloom Box at a highly orchestrated media event Wednesday morning.
Tech journalists joined Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bloom cofounder and CEO K.R. Sridhar, venture capitalist John Doerr and former Secretary of State Colin Powell at eBay's San Jose headquarters to learn how Bloom, which has raised about $400 million from investors, plans to mass produce its solid oxide fuel cells.
More at link
http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_14461347?nclick_check=1Bloom Energy, a Sunnyvale startup that has been working for years on a fuel cell that... more
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Watch the 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl:
The internet loves mysterious product unveilings, especially those promising to revolutionize the world and how we live in it. (Think Apple’s iPhone.) But few (except for maybe the iPhone) actually live up to the hype. (Or so I hear. Anyone wanna get me an iPhone?)
Now, after nearly a decade of secrecy, Bloom Energy CEO K.R. Sridhar is coming out of the shadows to tell the world how his “Bloom Box” will do all of this and more as a “zero-emissions” mini-power plant. Bloom Energy debuted its heady energy dreams in an exclusive interview on 60 Minutes this past Sunday, with the company’s official launch to come on Wednesday at early customer eBay’s California headquarters. Google, Wal-Mart, and FedEx have also been quietly testing these heavily-subsidized magic boxes on their premises, with encouraging energy and cost savings thus far.
But, zero emissions? A backyard power plant-in-a-box? Sounds fancy, but what is a Bloom Box and is it really the next “energy breakthrough”?
The Bloom Box is a fuel cell, not an energy source.
According to CBS, it’s “a new kind of fuel cell, which is like a very skinny battery that always runs. Sridhar feeds oxygen to it on one side, and fuel on the other. The two combine within the cell to create a chemical reaction that produces electricity. There’s no need for burning or combustion, and no need for power lines from an outside source.”
But the box still requires a fuel source, which 60 Minutes interviewer Lesley Stahl glosses over in a few sentences:
To make power, you’d still need fuel. Many past fuel cells failed because they needed expensive pure hydrogen. Not this box.
“Our system can use fossil fuels like natural gas. Our system can use renewable fuels like landfill gas, bio-gas,” Sridhar told Stahl. “We can use solar.”
CNN’s Fortune Brainstorm blog explains things a little better:
“Hydrocarbons such as natural gas or biofuel (stored in an adjacent tank) are pumped into the Bloom Box—ceramic plates stacked atop each other to form modules that can be assembled into a unit of any size—and out comes abundant, reliable, cleaner electricity.”
(Take a look here for a few reasons natural gas isn’t always the “cleaner electricity” it’s made out to be.)
UPDATE: The original quote by the Christian Science Monitor incorrectly tried to explain how the Bloom Box might use renewable vs. fossil fuels. CO2 would not be emitted from “whatever power plant is feeding the Bloom Box,” but instead, would be a by-product of the methane fuel feeding it (whether it’s from natural gas or landfill gas). Fuel could not (and should not) come directly from solar or wind, because that’s an inefficient use of electricity, which is difficult to store and should be used immediately. The “zero emissions” claim only holds up in the same way that biofuels take CO2 out of the system upstream. Bloom Boxes would likely be using natural gas most of the time, which is far from zero emissions.
Venture capitol blog VentureBeat hones in on some of the more interesting points about this invention:
“Right now, it’s available on a large scale, with each box costing as much as $800,000. In the next five to ten years, Bloom says it will release smaller boxes for individual households costing less than $3,000. If this happens, there is a chance that Bloom Boxes could [supplant] utilities and long-distance transmission lines—not to mention capital intensive wind farms and solar arrays.”
I could imagine these boxes perhaps replacing million-dollar-a-mile transmission lines, but I doubt the Bloom Box will electrify the power industry if it’s supposedly replacing many of the clean energy sources it would require for fuel.
And with this list of 10 Fuel Cell Startups Hot On Bloom Energy’s Trail, Earth2Tech emphasizes that Bloom isn’t the only company out there trying to master fuel cell technology: “In fact, stationary fuel cells—devices that chemically convert hydrogen into electricity and water, or hydrogen-containing fuels into power, water and various byproducts—are already a highly-populated industry.”
Here’s the best analogy I’ve come up with for the potential of the Bloom Box: It isn’t the internet; that would be the fuel, which may or may not be renewable. The Bloom Box is more akin to the wireless router—rather than the dial-up modem—that gets the internet to your laptop (aka your house). But right now it’s one heck of a pricey router.
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-02-22-what-the-heck-is-a-bloom-box-and-will-it-solve-the-worlds-energy/Watch the 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl:
The internet loves mysterious... more
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A new method for “recycling” hydrogen-containing fuel materials could open the door to economically viable hydrogen-based vehicles.A new method for “recycling” hydrogen-containing fuel materials could open... more
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Mercedes-Benz is set to launch its first series-produced fuel cell car called the B-Class F-CELL. Great! Now; where can I go to fill this thing up?Mercedes-Benz is set to launch its first series-produced fuel cell car called the... more
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Last year T. Boone Pickens brought the concept of natural gas as a vehicle fuel into the national stream of consciousness when he launched his “Pickens Plan”. Since then the concept has evolved to the point where there are several pieces of legislation making their way through Congress (Natural Gas Act of 2009)and the Senate which will encourage the more widespread implementation of this “green” fossil fuel. Recent estimates of the natural gas reserves in the United States indicate that we have a 100 year supply which is equal to all of the oil in Saudi Arabia. Pickens and his supporters are calling natural gas a bridge fuel to a greener tomorrow but some critics seem unsure of how this could work.
In this story I will attempt to answer those doubts by building that bridge in realistic terms from readily available information. In simplest terms Pickens CNG “bridge” can extend the time we have to transition to another vehicle fuel no matter what type. In a previous story (Why The Future of Transportation Fuel Is Hydrogen)I pointed out that hydrogen fuel is the logical choice as our eventual primary fuel because, when produced from water using solar or wind energy, it is 100% non polluting and 100% renewable. In addition, in the near term, it is the one fuel which can be produced from anything domestically available that we are currently using as a fuel including fossil sources and renewables. From my perspective Pickens has created the best, most viable option for a transition to 100% clean hydrogen fuel.
Hydrogen energy has, to this point, faced a lot of obstacles because it requires a specialized storage and distribution infrastructure and, even though it can be used with our familiar, internal combustion engine powered vehicles (with the proper storage and fuel system), the cost of the infrastructure necessary combined with the fact that it is much better to use hydrogen with fuel cell vehicles in order to take advantage of its full potential and the cost of producing hydrogen have all served to keep hydrogen energy stalled at the verge of being implemented. In financial terms it is something of a chicken or egg scenario; do we build the infrastructure with no cars available or build the cars with no infrastructure or invest hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into building both simultaneously?
Pickens idea of using natural gas as the vehicle to transport us into an independent, green energy transportation future provides the only viable option from the perspectives of both economic viability and seamlessness of transition. In fact India has been quietly pursuing this same concept for at least the past 5 years or more and doing it from an angle that is not even mentioned as an option in the US.
It started when the Indian government mandated that all public vehicles in Delhi be converted to run on CNG fuel in order to cut pollution in the city. CNG fuel produces 25% less CO2 pollution than gasoline vehicles and 90% fewer other pollutants. From there the concept evolved into one where the vehicles are running on a mix of CNG and hydrogen fuel. This mixture further reduces CO2 pollution by a percentage roughly equal to the percentage of hydrogen mixed into the CNG stream. In a press release from this past January it was revealed that all of the Indian car manufacturers are now working together to develop cars for retail sale which will be optimized to run on this fuel mix.
Clink link above to read entire story...Last year T. Boone Pickens brought the concept of natural gas as a vehicle fuel into... more
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Recently Toyota announced that they would be introducing a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle in 2015 which would "shock" the US auto market. Assuming that to be true one has to wonder more about how they are going to do it than if they are going to do it. Toyota isn't stupid and to evolve transportation in a new direction would be a marketing coup even bigger than what they achieved with the extremely popular Prius hybrid.
The development of a cheap fuel cell vehicle that is priced competitively with internal combustion cars would be like achieving the holy grail of the current race toward a green energy economy. Even if they do that though a big obsticle still remains which is to develop a fueling infrastructure for the vehicles. Currently there are very few hydrogen refueling stations worldwide. Hardly enough to justify the introduction of a mass produced hydrogen fueled vehicle.
It will be interesting to see how this evolves and how Toyota overcomes that single largest obsticle. If they do it correctly I think it is possible. I doubt that they would be comfortable in assuming that the US government will build them a fueling infrastructure in the next 5 years and I also doubt that Toyota will take on the job of building a national hydrogen fueling infrastructure on their own.
Continue reading at the link above...Recently Toyota announced that they would be introducing a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle... more
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There is a lot of talk these days about "alternative fuels." But just what are these alternative fuels, and why is everyone so excited about them?
In the simplest terms, an alternative fuel is any fuel other than gasoline or diesel. Since many alternative fuels are also renewable — and can be produced here in the U.S. — they could reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Alternative fuels such as biodiesel, ethanol and methanol, have been produced and used on a small scale for decades. They are now being rediscovered due to the rising cost of oil and the instability of world politics. Here's where our oil is imported from — it may surprise you to read who the top supplier is.
Before we get to the specifics, let's clear up a related point. There is a big difference between "energy" and "fuel," even though the terms are used interchangeably. While it is often said that we are in an "energy crisis," this isn't accurate. Energy exists all around us in many different forms. The problem is that energy needs to be stored and transported as fuel. So, technically speaking, we should talk about a "fuel shortage," not an "energy crisis."
To help you better understand this developing area of technology, we've put together a list of the most commonly mentioned alternative fuels and given a brief description of each one.
Biodiesel is used to refer to renewable fuels that can be burned in a diesel engine. Biodiesel is most often made from the oil extracted from a variety of plants, such as peanuts or soybeans, although it can also be made from animal fats. Vegetable oil needs treatment before it can be burned in a diesel engine. Biodiesel can be used at 100 percent strength or blended with petroleum-based diesel fuel, and is used in diesel engines without any modification to the engine. It is both non-toxic and biodegradable. It is nearly free of sulfur and carcinogenic benzene — two of the components of petroleum diesel that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state emissions boards have issued regulations on because of environmental and health concerns. The main drawback to biodiesel is that it is not widely available yet.
Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is widely used for heating, cooking and cooling. When it is compressed and stored in a fuel tank, it can be used as a very clean-burning fuel for cars and trucks. Gas-burning engines can easily be modified to run on CNG, but there is only one car widely available to the public that uses this fuel, the Honda Civic GX. Currently, natural gas is a cheaper form of fuel for cars than gasoline, but CNG pumps are hard to find and CNG cars don't go as far on a tank of fuel as gasoline-powered vehicles. Most CNG vehicles are part of commercial fleets (taxicabs, municipal buses, etc.) that have their own pumps on-site for convenient refueling.
Electric cars run on electrical power stored in batteries. These cars produce no emissions. However, the power plants that generate electricity are often fueled by coal, which does produce emissions that have an adverse effect on the environment. Aside from golf cartlike vehicles with top speeds of about 25 mph, the only pure electric car currently for sale is the Tesla Roadster. But some existing cars have been adapted to run on electric power. Hybrid vehicles use regenerative braking systems to charge electric batteries and, as such, are partly electric.
Ethanol is a form of alcohol often produced from corn or sugar cane, and has a higher octane rating than gasoline. Like other alcohols, ethanol can be used as a fuel in gasoline engines. Ethanol is blended with gasoline and used in cars with little or no modification of the engine. Gasohol is a mixture of about 10-percent ethanol and 90-percent gasoline and will run in an unmodified car. In fact, when you fuel up at a gas station in many U.S. states,
VISIT LINK FOR REST OF ARTICLEThere is a lot of talk these days about "alternative fuels." But just what... more
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HAMBURG, Germany (AFP) – The world's first piloted aircraft capable of taking to the air using only power from fuel cells took off in Germany Tuesday, producing zero carbon dioxide emissions, its makers said....
...Developed by the DLR, Lange Aviation, BASF Fuel Cells and Denmark's Serenergy, the Antares DLR-H2 motor glider has a range of 750 kilometres (465 miles) and can fly for five hours.
What do you guys think if this zero-emission feat?HAMBURG, Germany (AFP) – The world's first piloted aircraft capable of... more
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Hydrogen fuel cell technology is full of promise, but it's being held back by the problem of storing the dangerous gas safely and efficiently. Some U.S. scientists have been tackling this, and their solution is as ingenious as it is odd: Carbonized chicken feathers.
feathersThe University of Delaware team realized that the protein keratin, the main ingredient in chicken feather fibers, had fabulous properties when it's heated. Basically the keratin creates very strong cross-links when it's carbonized, and the feather fibers become extremely porous, which dramatically increases their surface area. As a result, the carbonized feathers can absorb huge amounts of hydrogen into their structure.Hydrogen fuel cell technology is full of promise, but it's being held back by the... more
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"Material scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a technique for a bimetallic fuel cell catalyst that is efficient, robust and two to five times more effective than commercial catalysts. The novel technique eventually will enable a cost effective fuel cell technology, which has been waiting in the wings for decades, and should give a boost for cleaner use of fuels worldwide.
"There are two ways to make a more effective catalyst," Xia says. "One is to control the size, making it smaller, which gives the catalyst a higher specific surface area on a mass basis. Another is to change the arrangement of atoms on the surface. We did both. You can have a square or hexagonal arrangement for the surface atoms. We chose the hexagonal lattice because people have found that it's twice as good as the square one for the oxygen reduction reaction.
"We're excited by the technique, specifically with the performance of the new catalyst."
he Department of Energy has estimated for widespread commercial success the "loading" of platinum catalysts in a fuel cell should be reduced by four times in order to slash the costs. The Washington University technique is expected to substantially reduce the loading of platinum, making a more robust catalyst that won't have to be replaced often, and making better use of a very limited and very expensive supply of platinum in the world.""Material scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a... more
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New Holland has developed a prototype farm tractor which is powered by hydrogen fuel cells. They hope to bring the tractor to market in 3 years. Imagine a farm where you can produce your own fuel from water with electricity generated by wind or solar energy or even from biogas produced on the farm...
For a description of the tractor see this .pdf file from New Holland:
http://agriculture.newholland.com/PublishingImages/cnhimg/we/Hydrogen/NH2_90014_INB.pdfNew Holland has developed a prototype farm tractor which is powered by hydrogen fuel... more
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