Questions from concerned citizens about energy, hydrogen and fuel cells answered by Hydrogenambassadors.com Vol. 2: From the future after hybrids to the most efficient PEMs Here you find answers to questions from concerned citizens about sustainability, hydrogen and fuel cells. You are most welcome to send in your own set of energy related questions. 5) Who will lead the roads in the future after hybrids? FCVs or BEVs? The roads will be led by new companies, who might not even exist today. These new companies will provide cars for the global market, which are different from today`s vehicles: With much more added value for the car owner or better, for the car sharers. A complete different transportation system will soon has to come. This will be based on hydrogen driven cars, real car-pooling and much other, today unknown features and abilities of the individual car and also of the whole car fleet worldwide. Here you find my EnergyIdea # 48, discribing my thoughts on: Hybrid or electric drive, fuel cell or Hydrogen engine - that is the question? http://www.hydrogenambassadors.com/background/arnos-energy-idea48.php 6) What is your opinion on global legislation's for FC, CO2 emissions, recyclable rate, WTW efficiency, etc.? Here my opinion is rather pessimistic as all these legislations in the end are written by the utilities or by other profit oriented organizations. This approach will lead nowhere. In fact they are distorting (or better: hindering the technological progress). In a country like Germany, even Deutsche Bank AG, Germany`s biggest international bank, is involved in a court case for dealing illegal with Co2 emissions. They made hundreds of millions of illegal profits on dealing wrongly with CO2 emission papers. That is no solution either. Mankind should have better ideas! Here you can find the earth`s energy balance. Human influence by mechanical energy convertion is only in the region of 0,005 percent: http://www.hydrogenambassadors.com/background/earths-energy-balance.php 7) How do you see the end of the next decade 2020 in terms of applications for fuel cells? This all depends on solving the question of the production of hydrogen. At the moment, 95 pc of the hydrogen used is made from fossil fuels (steam reforming of coal or oil). The remaining 5 pc are made by electrolyzing. Both ways are neither renewable nor sustainable. Only if the hydrogen is made in a benign process, like with thermal water splitting with Concentrating Solar Power (CSP), the usage of fuel cells, to convert the hydrogen into electricity, water and heat, will proceed. I called this hydrogen: "golden" hydrogen, because it originates from the sun only. No fossil fuels, no electricity needed as feedstock. Here you can read more about this process, rather clever solved and much more than on laboratory scale: http://www.hydrogenambassadors.com/background/direct-hydrogen-production-from-solar-energy.php 8.) Is still NAFION the leader on the most efficient PEMs? Nafion is a sulfonated tetrafluoroethylene based fluoropolymer-copolymer discovered in the late 1960s by Walther Grot of DuPont in the USA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nafion However, this rear material alone does not make a PEM fuel cell, as you need much more to have a fuel cell running. You need a whole system, incl. auxiliaries like pumps, cooling system, water management and the like. That is the difficult thing about PEM, to get them working. Here to me, at the moment, the Ballard/Daimler AG daughter company called: AFCC Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation, Burnaby, BC, Canada is the most promising company working on it. I have been there in 2009, here you find my report: http://www.hydrogenambassadors.com/meet-aae/hfc2009/technical-tour.php
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