Proton exchange membranes (PEMs) find applications not only in fuel cells and sensors but as chemical filters and in biological systems. In particular, the Nafion (Chemours Company) PEM, which consists of sulfonated tetrafluoroethylene–based fluoropolymer-copolymer, is widely used in practical electrochemical processes. It has a high proton conductivity up to 0.2 S/cm below 80°C and high relative humidity (RH) (>93%) (1), but its conductivity drops severely at higher temperatures or at low RH (below 50%). On page 596 of this issue, Qian et al. (2) report a new class of proton membranes assembled from two-dimensional (2D) layered transition-metal phosphorus trichalcogenide (TMPTC) nanosheets in which metal vacancies boost ion conductivity. These membranes exhibit a proton conductivity of ∼0.95 S/cm at 90°C and 98% RH but still have a conductivity of 0.26 S/cm even at 60% RH.
A fuel cell bus unveiled by Chinese automaker Geely. (Photo courtesy of Geely)
TOKYO/BEIJING/NAGOYA, Japan -- China's push to promote hydrogen fuel cells as the next big thing in the auto industry has led to a slew of ambitious plans to develop the sector as local authorities vie for hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives.
State-owned SAIC Motor, based in Shanghai, recently announced its first medium-term strategy for fuel cells. The automaker aims to roll out at least 10 models and gain the capacity to produce 10,000 vehicles per year by 2025, and will shift to domestic sourcing as it looks to become globally competitive by 2030.
SAIC's announcement represents part of a plan by the Shanghai government, which oversees the automaker, to cultivate the city's fuel cell industry. The municipal government said last month that it aims to have 10,000 fuel cell autos in use by 2023 and build up the sector's output to 100 billion yuan ($14.9 billion).
The Chinese government has subsidized purchases of fuel cell vehicles for some time. A hydrogen-powered bus, for example, can qualify for as much as $100,000 in local and central government incentives in some cases. Yet a total of just 7,200 or so fuel cell vehicles had been sold as of this past July.
The government is shifting its approach, focusing on support for related areas such as parts and hydrogen fueling stations, which are seen as essential for bringing fuel cells into broader use.
Under a new program announced last month, certain municipalities will be designated as "model cities," with each receiving up to 1.7 billion yuan in funding for fuel cell vehicle development over four years.
The cities of Chongqing and Chengdu have already submitted a joint application. Yang Liqiong, deputy director of the Chongqing Economic and Information Technology Commission, told reporters that the city will "establish a hydrogen-power corridor with Chengdu."
Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing are also set to apply before the mid-November deadline, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Local authorities plan to supplement central government funding with subsidies of their own to support businesses in the field.
China seeks to make all new autos sold in the country "eco-friendly" by 2035, with "new-energy vehicles" such as electrics and hydrogen-powered cars making up half the total, according to a road map announced Tuesday. The government aims to boost cumulative sales of fuel cell vehicles to 1 million by that year.
These targets will be essential to reaching the country's goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2060.
Fuel cells are seen as especially promising for commercial vehicles such as buses and trucks, as they are lighter and have a longer range than electric batteries.
China also has a ready supply of hydrogen, which is generated as a byproduct of chemical plants and steel mills. Switching to fuel cells from gasoline would help improve energy security for a country that imports 70% of its oil.
The fuel cell push is particularly good news for Toyota Motor, which is a trailblazer in the field and also has many partner companies in Beijing and Guangdong Province, which are seen as likely candidates for the "model city" program.
The government's policies are "very welcome," a Toyota executive said.
Toyota supplies parts for fuel cell vehicles to Chinese partners including FAW Group under a 2019 tie-up. The Japanese company also formed a joint venture this past August with FAW and four other automakers to develop fuel cells for commercial vehicles, which is slated to begin shipping fuel cell systems for Chinese buses and trucks in fiscal 2022.
Toyota supplies cell stacks made in Japan's Aichi Prefecture, where its headquarters are located, aiming to promote fuel cell technology in China while minimizing the risk of technology leaks.
But some in Japan regard China's progress on this front with alarm. Tokyo's strategic hydrogen road map calls for the total number of fuel cell autos in the country to reach 40,000 by 2020, but only about 4,000 had been sold as of the end of fiscal 2019.
While Toyota and compatriot Honda Motor are at the forefront in terms of technology, developing a supply chain will be difficult until fuel cells enter broader use.
"Looking at China's momentum is worrying," an executive in the Toyota group said. "We want to see stronger policies from the Japanese government."
COLUMBUS, Ind.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cummins Inc. (NYSE: CMI) has announced the company received two federal grants totaling $4.6 million to advance commercialization of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology, which could play a critical role in helping commercial and industrial customers reduce their carbon impact while providing energy resiliency and cutting costs.
SOFCs can convert fossil fuels into energy much more efficiently than combustion-based processes and can also use low- and no-carbon fuels such as hydrogen to generate power. They have the potential to be a bridge to a carbon-neutral future and much more.
“We need every tool we can get to address the world’s climate challenges and other environmental issues,” said Thad Ewald, Vice President of Corporate Strategy at Cummins. “Solid oxide fuel cells give our customers another way to achieve their environmental sustainability goals.”
SOFCs use a ceramic electrolyte to convert the energy in a fuel to power through a series of electrochemical reactions. With a continuous supply of fuel and oxygen, the fuel cells can be linked or stacked together to power a variety of applications.
Compared to combustion processes, SOFCs are capable of converting a significantly higher percentage of a fossil fuel’s energy into electricity while producing far less heat-trapping gases and emissions than an internal combustion engine using a petroleum-based fuel, or a coal-burning power plant.
Advocates envision a day in the near future when solid oxide fuel cells regularly power major energy users like data centers, removing them from an increasingly over-burdened electrical grid.
The grants from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will help fund two projects demonstrating SOFCs’ potential. A $2.6 million DOE grant will help Cummins build a 20 kilowatt (kW) small-scale SOFC power system at the University of Connecticut, fueled by natural gas but able to use multiple fuels. It will run 5,000 hours to demonstrate its durability.
That’s not a big enough SOFC system to power a data center but systems can be aggregated together to provide energy resiliency, security and availability, sufficient for not only data centers but other commercial and industrial applications and microgrids, too.
Cummins’ proposal calls for developing a system that would be available at a price point below $1,000/kW with the flexibility and robustness for use in smaller and larger systems. The proposal calls for testing to begin in 2021.
A second project funded with the help of a $2 million DOE grant will look at the cost, performance and reliability of a reversible fuel cell or R-SOFC. It can run as a traditional SOFC or as a solid oxide electrolyzer cell (SOEC) that can split steam to separate hydrogen and oxygen.
This increases Cummins’ already market leading portfolio of electrolyzers to generate hydrogen, including Proton Exchange Membrane and alkaline technologies. The DOE grant proposal calls for building on a Cummins proprietary thermal spray technology to develop an advanced metal substrate or surface resulting in a 50% cost reduction by using less metal and cutting processing costs.
Cummins is quickly emerging as the leader in SOFCs for commercial and industrial power. The company’s novel spray technology, for example, enables Cummins to achieve larger cells, higher power densities, increased reliability and lower costs. The company’s industry leading cell and stack size reduces system costs and complexity while providing a modular building block suitable for a variety of applications. The company also uses commodity stainless steel in its cells rather than more expensive and brittle ceramics used by some competitors.
The company’s work on SOFCs is consistent with PLANET 2050, Cummins’ environmental sustainability strategy adopted in 2019 to address climate change and other environmental issues. The strategy includes science-based goals aligned with the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius by the middle of the century.
Want to learn more about Cummins investments in SOFCs and other fuel cell technologies? Join company leaders including Chairman and CEO Tom Linebarger at 10:30 a.m. (EST) Nov. 16 for Cummins’ Hydrogen Day. Click here to register.
About Cummins Inc.
Cummins Inc., a global power leader, is a corporation of complementary business segments that design, manufacture, distribute and service a broad portfolio of power solutions. The company’s products range from diesel, natural gas, electric and hybrid powertrains and powertrain-related components including filtration, aftertreatment, turbochargers, fuel systems, controls systems, air handling systems, automated transmissions, electric power generation systems, batteries, electrified power systems, hydrogen generation and fuel cell products. Headquartered in Columbus, Indiana (U.S.), since its founding in 1919, Cummins employs approximately 61,600 people committed to powering a more prosperous world through three global corporate responsibility priorities critical to healthy communities: education, environment and equality of opportunity. Cummins serves its customers online, through a network of company-owned and independent distributor locations, and through thousands of dealer locations worldwide and earned about $2.3 billion on sales of $23.6 billion in 2019. See how Cummins is powering a world that’s always on by accessing news releases and more information at https://www.cummins.com/always-on.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Advent Technologies, an innovation-driven company in the fuel cell and hydrogen technology space, today announced that it has reached an agreement to collaborate with Los Alamos National Labs, University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), University of New Mexico and Toyota Motor North America R&D (TMNA R&D) to continue development of next-generation high-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane (HT-PEM) fuel cell technology for the automotive industry. The program is funded by an Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (“ARPA-E”) OPEN award.
Dr. Vasilis Gregoriou, Advent’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer, commented: “We at Advent are committed to bringing HT-PEM technology to the market. Drawing on our leadership team’s decades of experience, we intend to commercialize and scale-up membrane electrode assembly (MEA) production while working closely with Tier-1 manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers. We believe that HT-PEM represents not only a breakthrough for heavy-duty automotive technology but also for aviation, portable, and off-grid power generation.”
Dr. Emory DeCastro, Advent’s Chief Technology Officer, added: “We are very excited to work with LANL (Los Alamos) and our other partners to advance this technology. These developments have the potential to lead to groundbreaking cost savings – including dropping overall fuel cell system costs by 25% and enabling higher power density and simplify packaging constraints. Furthermore, the potential to use eFuels instead of hydrogen can provide a significantly lower total cost of ownership and allow for faster deployment of fuel cell technology across the industry.”
The purpose of the development program is to use HT-PEM technology operating at 80oC-150oC to achieve a variety of objectives, including:
1.
High Energy Efficiency: The target efficiency of the HT-PEM simplified fuel cell system is 70% vs. 60% for current incumbent technology; thereby providing a significant total cost of ownership advantage. This is especially important for long haul trucks using hydrogen fuel cells.
2.
Fast Startup Time: Develop extremely stable fuel-cells that can start under nearly water-saturated conditions.
3.
Superior Heat Management: Completely remove the external humidifiers/demisters and substantially reduce the size of the radiator. Various industry sources have stated that radiators for Class 8 Trucks running with low-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane (LT-PEM) technology are an enormous challenge. There is evidence that the size of the radiator required to run a Class 8 truck in hot and dry conditions (i.e. in places such as Nevada, Australia, Africa and India) is impractical and will pose a huge challenge for the deployment of current fuel cell technology. Next-generation HT-PEM technology aims to solve this problem.
4.
Increase Lifetime: Boost tolerance to impurities and improve performance with platinum and non-platinum catalysts.
5.
Address the hydrogen infrastructure challenge: Allow for the direct reformation of a variety of fuels (natural gas, methanol, ethanol, and zero-carbon emissions eFuels of the future) to low grade (impure) hydrogen within the vehicle, thus bypassing the need for expensive hydrogen storage, transportation, and de/compression technology and hydrogen refill stations.
About Advent Technologies
Advent Technologies is an innovation-driven company in the fuel cell and hydrogen technology space. Our vision is to accelerate electrification through advanced materials, components, and next-generation fuel cell technology. Our technology applies to electrification (fuel cells) and energy storage (flow batteries, hydrogen production) markets, which we commercialize through partnerships with Tier1s, OEMs, and System Integrators. For more information on Advent Technologies, please visit the Company’s website at https://www.advent.energy/
Co-founder and CEO of HyPoint, the company developing zero-carbon emission hydrogen fuel cell systems for aviation and urban air mobility.
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"Fuel cells = fool sells," Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted on June 10. "Staggeringly dumb," he continued. As CNBC noted, Musk has previously "dismissed hydrogen fuel cells as 'mind-bogglingly stupid.'" He has also "called them 'fool cells,' a 'load of rubbish,' and told Tesla shareholders at an annual meeting years ago that 'success is simply not possible.'"
Clearly, Musk is not a fan of hydrogen fuel cells — at least not for use in cars — which makes sense since he built the Tesla empire on lithium-ion batteries.
The debate between lithium-ion and hydrogen has raged for decades. Both can be used as clean, zero-emission alternatives to fossil fuels, but while hydrogen fuel cells have been around much longer (indeed, it is what NASA used to put men on the moon in 1969), it was lithium-ion batteries that ultimately proved much easier to commercialize, particularly for use in passenger cars.
Part of that is because hydrogen fuel cells are more complex; they generate energy by creating and harnessing chemical reactions between hydrogen and oxygen while leaving water vapor as the only emission. And while hydrogen is lightweight, incredibly efficient and the most abundant resource in the universe, it currently takes a lot of energy to harness hydrogen.
"Hydrogen is an energy storage mechanism. It's not a source of energy," Musk said at a 2015 press conference. "Electrolysis is extremely inefficient as an energy process. If you took a solar panel and used the energy from that solar panel to just charge your battery pack directly compared to trying to split water, take the hydrogen, dump the oxygen, compress the hydrogen to an extremely high pressure or liquefy it and then put it in a car and run a fuel cell, it is about half the efficiency. It's terrible."
In some ways, Musk is right. For passenger cars, the economics for hydrogen just aren't there yet, nor is the infrastructure. However, he's missing the ways in which hydrogen fuel cells fit into the bigger picture wherein the economics do make sense — greening the electrical grid and zero-emission aviation, trucking, shipping, urban air mobility, space travel and more.
Governments and leaders around the world are rallying behind hydrogen as a key component to their plans for addressing climate change, not just in the transportation sector but across their entire energy grid. Consider that the European Commission announced its Hydrogen Strategy for a climate-neutral Europe in which it said that hydrogen is "an important part of the solution to meet the 2050 climate neutrality goal of the European Green Deal." Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden announced a $2 trillion clean energy plan that includes renewable hydrogen technology innovation. And Boris Johnson announced 335 million pounds ($446 million) in funding to help drive down greenhouse gas emissions, including the development of hydrogen fuel. Those announcements were made just within the last six months.
Meanwhile, at Tesla's Battery Day in September, Musk acknowledged that his vision for lithium-ion batteries is more complicated than he expected, on a longer technological timetable and not scalable enough to solve the world's most pressing climate problems. Yet surprisingly, in spite of an unprecedented surge in international interest, there was no mention of the clearest solution for zero-emission energy that would meet his own climate goals: hydrogen.
The technology for zero-emission hydrogen fuel cells for use in transportation and other industries isn't a pipe dream — it already exists. Though you might not know it, hydrogen-powered trains, trucks, cars, airplanes and ships are already out in the wild. CNBC noted that "there are dozens of fuel cell buses in use or planned in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Massachusetts, as well as California" and that "more than 23,000 fuel cell-powered forklifts in operation at warehouses and distribution centers across the U.S. in more than 40 states, including at Amazon and Walmart facilities."
That's just the beginning. The future of urban air mobility (flying cars, air taxis and advanced drones) can only run on hydrogen fuel due to the specific power and energy density that it offers. Carbon-based fuels are simply too heavy, and batteries die too quickly to get small vehicles off the ground. NASA knew that more than 50 years ago, and we're just now commercializing it for more widespread use. Air taxi developers, including Uber Elevate (and hundreds more), are racing to get zero-emission urban air mobility vehicles off the ground by using lithium-ion batteries, hydrogen fuel cells or a combination of both.
In the end, in spite of a relatively slow start, many analysts expect that the hydrogen energy market will take off, driven by both private and public investment around the world. I believe it would behoove Musk — and all of us — if he took another look at hydrogen if for no other reason than to stay true to his mission of combating climate change. Critically, he could help push the hydrogen fuel cell market forward by encouraging responsible development and driving investment.
