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Back to the Forum 2006
Archives Is it cutting edge technology or smoke and mirrors? Maybe a little of both. I just started reading a pretty good textbook called, "Fuel Cell Fundamentals." It was written by a small committee of heavy duty researchers. The names are, Ryan O'hayre, Suk-won Cha, Whitney Coletta, and Fritz B. Prinz. You probably don't want to buy it. It cost me $110.00 at Amazon. I am just getting into the book, but I have learned enough to give you a short impression. Follow up, if ever, will come after I finish reading it. Besides the price, I have another good reason for this reading adventure. I recently committed myself to searching for the magic answer to America's energy problems. There are really two problems involved. First is the very real problem of global warming caused by the combustion of fossil fuels. That must be solved if civilization is to survive. The second is not a problem, but a perception. That is the alleged high cost of gasoline. The truth is, gasoline costs about the same now as it did in 1954. Here are some numbers for you to chew on. When I was released from the army in 1952, I had some bucks in my pocket. There are not many places to spend money In Korea. I had enough to go out and pay $1,800.00 for a new full sized four door 1953 Chevrolet sedan. I also went to school and two years later I got a job as a technician at Bendix Corporation at $4,800.00 a year. At that time, gasoline cost about $0.30 per gallon. Now fast forward to 2006. Multiply everything by approximately ten. A new auto, equivalent to the one I bought in 52, costs about 25 grand. A technician at Ford Motor Company, if he still has a job, is making about 50 grand. Gasoline is up to about $3.00. Go figure. Since I decided to attempt to solve this energy problem, I have some studying to do. I have several study guides on chemistry. I am also lucky enough to have a daughter with a PHD in biogenetics. That is a science which is based in chemistry, so she had to learn chemistry first. I also have some relatives who are chemical engineers. All very good. I am not so well endowed in fuel cells connections, but I must follow that path to see if the solution lies in that direction. So far as I can tell, fuel cells will be a long time coming if they come at all. Right now it has all the markings of a dead end road. This is not to say no good work has been done or nothing will come of it. I just believe it will never solve the main problem. I think there is a serious misconception in the public awareness about fuel cells due to the hype we get from the media. We cannot blame the media folks because they are generally technically ignorant. They count on information from others and much of that information comes from people with a vested interest. PHD's write proposals for federal grant money and the media people sometimes mange to get copies of these things. What we should always remember is a proposal is, after all, a sales pitch. A guy or gal is trying to get a research grant for the university to be able to write a book or a paper about a research project. Publish or perish is still a slogan for many of these professors. Hence, these proposals will often be notable for what they leave out rather than what they say. Some of these folks would make very good science fiction writers. So, with that background, let s look at what I have learned so far. First I can tell you the fuel cell is not patentable. It was invented by William Grove in 1839. Of course, much of the enabling technology has been developed recently and is patentable. What is a fuel cell? It is really nothing more than a battery that uses an external fuel source to avoid the problem of battery discharge. So long as fuel is supplied, the battery continues to output electricity. It also outputs byproducts which must be dealt with. In the most hyped fuel cell the byproduct is water, H2O. The input must then be hydrogen and oxygen. So we put in hydrogen and oxygen and get out electricity and water. Sounds swell. This hydrogen cell is hyped because it is environmentally very clean and presents fewer technical problems in implementation. So what's the problem? From an environmental standpoint the hydrogen cell is best, but from a energy density standpoint, hydrogen is the worst possible fuel. The hydrogen atom has only one electrochemical bond to break. We can get exactly one electron from each atom. There are other possible fuels like hydrocarbon, but they present more difficult technical problems. Okay, here is the real zinger. It takes a lot more energy than I thought to run a car. In cars we talk horsepower (HP). Until recently, the attitude was, the more the better. So a five liter internal combustion engine can be configured to deliver about 300 horsepower. According to my conversions chart, 1HP = 745.7W (watts). What does that mean? It means we must have one heck of a big electricity source to run a high performance car. It's not as bad as all that. There are horsepower and there
are horsepower. I have a 16HP Briggs Stratton engine that runs
my emergency generator. That delivers 8KW (kilowatts) of continuous
power to my home. That comes out to a simple ratio, to wit: In the meantime, there is another problem with the generation
and delivery system. Even if this technology comes to fruition,
we would have to put a huge generation and delivery system in
place. Consider what it took to develop our current generation
and delivery system for gasoline. It ain't no small potatoes.
My own opinion is we should try very hard to figure out how to
use what we already have. The real problem is not the cost of
fuel, at least not yet. The real problem is pollution. My own
focus will be to look for a way to use the gasoline system we
already have without going through the environmentally destructive
and inefficient heat engine cycle. There must be a way to convert
octane directly into electricity. That is my goal.
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