Microbatman said:
It is my opinion that the key challenge with fuel cells is the fuel.
If it is hydrogen then.
Ya gota make hydrogen. You just cant find it somewhere and take/store it.
You have to crack the hydrogen from something else like water to get at it. It is not available in its free form.
What that = is it takes energy to make hydrogen. Thats upstream cost.
Until we find a energy efficient way to refine hydrogen its a loosing proposition.
OK so that device your talking about runs on methane. Why not just make it run on gasoline? That would be more convient.
If your are talking methane then just go with some other fuel.
The key point is, why burn oil gas or coal or nuke rods to make hydrogen? You are just using one energy to make another.
Firstly, seeing as though this fuel cell runs on methanol (not methane) which is a hydrocarbon chain chemical, the bi-product is likely to be a carbon based gas (C02 etc). This is definitely a not a carbon free fuel cell technology for cars/bikes. However Hydrogen fuel cells have water as their bi-product and do have potential as a carbon-free source of energy release.
The fact that the company is developing the product for the small/lightweight consumer electronics industry where the small energy requirements shows their understanding of this as they are not developing their product for the transportation industry where their product would still produce substantial carbon emissions.
True, both batteries and fuel cells only store energy, they don't make it or capture it out of nothingness as this is impossible. Energy can only transferred not created or destroyed (nuclear fission/fusion are a different ballgame and almost assuradley unsafe for mass transportation).
The
potential advantage of hydrogen fuel cells over batteries is greater energy density per unit volume and weight, and/or a greater energy density per $ than even the most cutting edge lithium batteries/ultra-capacitors. So they should not yet be discarded as an avenue for further research. However presently lithium batteries seem to be advancing rapidly on the cost and capacity basis due to the ready availability of raw ingredients needed for cell production. Something that cant yet be said for Hydrogen fuel cells. Due to this i am personally becoming increasingly skeptical that hydrogen fuel cells will ever be practical.
Either way, the real challenge facing humanity's transportation requirements is not the energy storage mechanism so much as making sure the supplied refueling energy comes from CO2-free renewable sources. Either feeding the electricity grid directly to charge our e-bike/e-car batteries at home, or through other processes such as using mirror magnified sun-rays to produce thermal reactions of chemicals which can be turned into carbon neutral/carbon free liquid fuels.
I agree that all the talk about cars "running on water" or "just add hydrogen" is simplified and naive green-washing propaganda that neglects to mention where the energy is sourced from to make the Hydrogen/electricity in the first place. If this energy is produced by coal fired power stations then we are just shifting emissions from petroleum to coal = Stupidity.
In a nutshell: Its the source of energy thats the BIG problem, not the storage solution.
