Clean Transport
Published on May 21st, 2015
by Tina Casey
30
May 21st, 2015 by Tina Casey
Our lab tour through Germany on the way to Saturday’s Formula E series all-electric vehicle race in Berlin has taken us along a winding path through cyber-physical systems, augmented reality, precision farming, and microfluidics, to name just a few things. We’ll get to all that stuff eventually, but for now we want to zero in on Wednesday’s visit to the research center Fraunhofer ICT-IMM in Mainz, for a big-picture sense of what the future has in store for fuel cells.
That’s quite timely because the last time we heard from Formula E CEO Alejandro Agag, he was hinting that fuel cells could be in the running for a future iteration of energy storage for the championship series. Now in its first season, Formula E currently requires that the participating teams use a standard EV battery.
VeGA Fuel Cells: The Answer To A Power Problem
Among other areas of expertise, Fraunhofer ICT-IMM focuses on fuel cell research and we were fortunate to have Professor Dr. Gunther Kolb, head of the Department of Decentralized and Mobile Energy Technology, greet our group in person and explain the sad tale of one such program: the Truma VeGA fuel cell.
Fraunhofer ICT-IMM is part of the sprawling Fraunhofer network of nonprofit research institutes in Germany (and beyond) that are tasked with bringing pure research to market by partnering with private firms.
Fraunhofer’s partner for the VeGA fuel cell project was the German company Truma, a long-running specialist in caravan heating and power systems (factoid: yes, named after the US president Harry Truman).
Truma found itself running into a power wall (no, not that Powerwall) when its customers began loading their caravans with electronic gadgets and other electrical equipment. That would result in batteries draining more quickly, which resulted in more trips to a charging opportunity, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of off-grid caravanning.
That’s similar to the problem faced by modern foot soldiers, who have hit a similar wall: a full load of electronic gear requires loads of different batteries, and the total load creates a huge physical burden that limits mobility options.
For Truma, the solution was to offer on-board fuel cells for recharging caravan batteries. The challenge was to fit the fuel cell into a dedicated space in a tightly packed caravan, and the price point had to be low enough to attract customers.
The VeGA fuel cell solution that the folks at Fraunhofer and Truma came up with solved some of those problems. In prototype form (pictured above, on display at Fraunhofer), VeGA won the silver f-Cell Award in 2007 and it won the 2008 Bavarian Energy Award.
The team went with liquified petroleum gas (LPG) as a precursor to generating hydrogen for the fuel cell, in order to use the existing recreational fuel infrastructure to leverage consumer interest.
Here’s the rundown from Fraunhofer:
The LPG is desulphurised in the system, converted into hydrogen in the fuel processor and further into power in the fuel cell stack. A DC/DC converter adapts the voltage of the generated power to the requirements of the battery, which is loaded by the system as soon as the voltage level falls beneath a certain critical value. By these means, about 28 kWh power can be generated out of an 11 kg LPG-container.
The prototype version was too expensive to bring to market. Just as importantly, it was too large and clunky to fit into an existing caravan space, but after a few more years of tinkering, the VeGA was ready for its closeup — leaner, meaner, and a lot cheaper.
Here’s a shot of the finished product on display at Fraunhofer (same angle as the prototype):
Truma rolled the product out in 2012, and then shut it down just a couple of years later. If you blinked, you missed it.
VeGA Fuel Cell, We Hardly Knew You
What happened to the Truma VeGA fuel cell? According to Dr. Kolb, while the cost of production came down considerably, it was still not low enough to attract enough customers and turn a profit. On its website, Truma further elaborates that emerging supply chain issues made it impossible to off the fuel cell at a reasonable price.
The Fuel Cell Is Dead, Long Live The Fuel Cell
So, that was the end of the VeGA. But that was certainly not the end of Fraunhofer’s forays into fuel cells. During our visit to Fraunhofer, Dr. Kolb was emphatic that fuel cell technology is “absolutely competitive” with battery technology. While price is the over-riding factor in the consumer market for fuel cells, in other markets the money thing can be counterbalanced by other factors.
Fraunhofer, for example, is currently developing a product for the airline market with the German aircraft cabin design specialists Diehl Aerosystems.
Called Project DIANA, it consists of a fuel cell packed onto a trolley that can fit into an existing space in an aircraft kitchen galley. As with the caravan fuel cells, the idea is to provide more power to meet growing demand, while fitting into a tightly defined space. In its current iteration, DIANA is designed as an autonomous, mini power plant for each galley, with an eye toward eventually providing enough power for the entire cabin. When the plane lands, the trolley can be rolled out and replaced quickly along with all of the other galley supplies.
A compact, portable, quick-refueling, off-grid, noiseless, relatively lightweight, zero-emission energy system also has value in military applications, as well as in emergency response, temporary clinics, field labs, and other sensitive work.
Fuel cells are also beginning to gain importance in programs aimed at improving air quality in seaports, and they are gaining traction in warehouse logistics. For some examples, check out the long list of customers for fuel cell electric lift trucks cited by the company Plug Power.
As for sustainability, Dr. Kolb noted that non-fossil methods for generating hydrogen fuel are already emerging. He also noted that Fraunhofer has partnered with Volvo (among others) in a project that uses low sulfur diesel to power a fuel cell, which in principle could be tweaked to apply to bio-diesel (PowerCell is a Volvo spinout company).
In addition, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems has developed a fuel cell that runs on bio-ethanol.
And yes, the fuel cell electric lift truck does bring us right over to our favorite topic, fuel cell electric vehicles. In the context of improving electric vehicle battery range, Dr. Kolb floated the idea that “a better solution at the end” would be to equip battery electric vehicles with range extenders in the form of fuel cells.
We thought of that, too, a while back. If you have any thoughts on the topic, drop us a note in the comment thread.
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Photo Credits: Tina Casey, at Fraunhofer ICT-IMM, Meinz.
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Tags: Formula E, fraunhofer, fuel cell electric vehicles, Fuel Cells, Germany, Plug Power, power cell, Truma VeGA
About the Author
Tina Casey Tina Casey specializes in military and corporate sustainability, advanced technology, emerging materials, biofuels, and water and wastewater issues. Tina’s articles are reposted frequently on Reuters, Scientific American, and many other sites. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter @TinaMCasey and Google+.
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What these German fuel cell projects have in common is that they don’t use hydrogen, but something we have already that does not call for a huge and very expensive new distribution system.
Bingo. Hydrogen is no good. As I say above, there’s a *four part series* from a former fuel-cell research explaining why.
Thank you John Bailo and offgridman, between the two of you that’s the gist of the title. It’s a mistake to dismiss the technology based on failed attempts to crack the consumer market, especially when other markets are already putting it to use. Those of you who are old enough to remember when only the richest kidz in high school could afford a pocket calculator know what I mean.
I don’t know what the “caution” part of this tale is except that in the end, despite a lot of hand wringing, misinformation, and the constant barage by trolls, fuel cells are a great, low cost, and clean technology, one that is just now blossoming each and every day.
John, since it apparently costs Toyota over $100k to manufacture their FCEV and 17 cents a mile to drive it I’m wondering who the “hand wringing, misinformation, and the constant barage by trolls” folks might actually be.
Might they be someone who posts “Hydrogen is very cheap and already produced in large quantities.”? Or “Toyota is making fuel cells for the Mirai at a cost of $17,000 and the price keeps coming down.”
My standard for when an alternative to ICEs arrive is when any one of the top ten vehicles in sales in the US (Ford F-150, Camry, Civic) can be replaced in price and range by an alternative drive type without purchase rebates or subsidies. We are so far from being there (even after completion of the Gigafactory) that we need to say “let’s develop any and all technologies”. Which is what govts. and research labs are doing – Toyota is working on AL-air batteries at the same time they are working on hybrids and FCVs
Ah, Michael. Once again you drag out your straw man.
You see anyone saying that we shouldn’t research fuel cells?
No, of course you don’t.
Hey Mike, stop the foreplay and just tell us what stock you want us all to buy into. Is it PX or APD? Or are you all in on TM?
Thank you green.future for the links and apologies if I didn’t make my point clear enough — this was certainly not intended to be a negative article. If fuel cells are not exactly setting the consumer market on fire (at least not for now), there are still plenty of opportunities to deploy the technology to commercial markets (I cited the example of warehouse logistics, for one), as well as military and emergency response markets, which means that there is plenty of incentive to keep investing in RD leading to more efficient, and more affordable, fuel cell-powered devices (see my archive at CleanTechnica for more fuel cell articles along similar lines).
Fraunhofer was actually set up by the US govt. to help Germany rebuild after WW-II. I think it worked. So “group hug” for US taxpayers!
hm.. nothing of that in the history of the society in Wikipedia nor on it’s own homepage(*).. any pointers for this?
*) even talks about competition from the US in the form of Battelle Memorial Institute
I forgot where I originally read it but I found this http://www.germaninnovation.org/shared/content/documents/60YearsofFraunhoferGesellschaft.pdf
which states on pg 8: “1951 …was granted research money for the first time from the Marshall plan through the European Recovery Plan…”
It was founded in 1949 but was a small group of academics trying to get research funding. Apparently the US, through the Marshall plan, was the first to actually give actual money – probably because no Germans had any. Not the same thing as “founded by” but close enough for the famous “group hug”.
Surprise, surprise another negative article on fuel cells from clean technica. I’m sure on the path of development for battery technologies there was never one battery company that ever went under.
Nope – http://www.nytimes (dot) com/2012/10/17/business/battery-maker-a123-systems-files-for-bankruptcy.html
Not – http://www.washingtonpost (dot) com/politics/obama-backed-electric-car-battery-company-files-for-bankruptcy-protection/2012/01/26/gIQAA5T3TQ_story.html
One – http://www.wsj (Dot) com/articles/SB10001424127887324904004578536491539936994
In all fairness; Tina Casey is the only part of Clean Technica that will even cover fuel cells.. The editor and other authors are notoriously known for being slanted and anti-hydrogen, stemming from who killed the electric car.
I just think it is sad that some people have a bad taste in their mouth from fuel cells from things that happened nearly 15 years ago and refuse to change their minds.
I think the problem is that no one has demonstrated how to make hydrogen affordably.
Most people seem to accept that fuel cells might become affordable (both in terms of initial cost and lifespan/maintenance). The problem is operating cost.
Even with unacceptable reformed methane derived hydrogen the cost per mile is higher than driving an ICEV. People will not move away from ICEVs unless they have an acceptable alternative. Paying significantly more per mile is not acceptable.
15 years ago? No, they have a bad taste from how hydrogen is produced TODAY.
The cheapest and most common way to make it uses natural gas, turning hydrogen into a fossil fuel. The cleanest way uses twice as much renewable energy per mile as an EV (possibly even triple).
There’s nothing on the horizon to change either of those facts. That’s where the “bias” comes from. On top of that, infrastructure is too big of a problem. Tesla’s superchargers cost less than a tenth the cost of an H2 station, are used for only about a tenth of their car’s mileage (road trips), and they need less than a tenth as many stations as H2 does to be practical. The infrastructure problem is literally orders of magnitude tougher than for EVs.
Compressed H2 packs only 10% of the energy as an equal volume of gasoline. Fuel cells may be as much as 3x as efficient but that still means that more “cubic meters” of H2 are going to have to be transported and stored. Much larger storage tanks and many more tanker cars/trucks to move H2 from plant to fueling station.
In addition, FCEVs have less range than do ICEVs. That means that were we to move to H2 FCEVs we’d have to replace the existing ~120,000 gas stations with far more H2 stations.
With hydrogen one is starting with an expensive fuel (storage technology) and compounding that cost with very significant infrastructure costs.
People can’t help but see things from their own perspective, so calling this a negative article towards fuel cells may just be your own bias.
When I first read it this morning it seemed like a very fair representation of the current situation. Fuel cells are improving, finding alternative fuels, coming down in costs, and are economic enough to be used in the many situations cited.
Just because the singular fact that they aren’t yet economical in all situations was mentioned, does not make the article negative.
You also confuse me with your reference to whatever happened fifteen years ago, because going back through there doesn’t seem to be any mention or link to it in the article.
If you are in favor of the use of fuel cells in personal vehicles that is great and it is likely to happen as the economics of their production and the sourcing of hydrogen are worked out. But due to basic physics it is unlikely that they will ever be used as the singular power source in an EV, there is always going to be a battery buffer between them and the drive train. So as the fuel cell expert said in the last couple of paragraphs they will most likely come into use as range extenders, a proposition Ms Casey has put forth many times before.
We are moving into a new world with new ways of producing, using, and storing energy. Yes there will be some failures along the way, like with the cases you cited, or the one case mentioned in the article.
So this flame war that seems to turn up in the comments about superiority of fuel cells or batteries after articles like this are just ridiculous. Both have their good and bad attributes, and it is going to be plain old economics and utility that decide their use in the many various applications available in a wide variety of market situations.
The fuel cell vehicles are already range extended battery vehicles.
The Mirai has almost the same drive-train as the Camry hybrid; but instead of an engine, it has a fuel cell. Keeps the battery always charged between 40-80%, so anytime you want to punch the accelerator, the battery will offset the lag of the fuel cell to catch up, and by the time the fuel cell catches up, it’s just keeping the batter charged while also supplying power to the wheels. When you coast, come to a stop, etc, as long as the battery is juiced up, the fuel cell will throttle down / turn off.
Sitting in a drive thru for 20 minutes? You’re not wasting fuel; you’re just hanging out as if the vehicle was parked….
Toyota sees the fuel cell as the natural evolution of the hybrid. Instead of a gasoline engine, a fuel cell provides the long range power. Even in low load situations, the battery is used as a buffer to the cell.
The benefit is that you don’t need to truck around a lot of heavy batteries, just enough say for 20 minutes of run time.
It’s like the difference between a hot water tank and a tankless system that makes hot water on demand.
Hydrogen is expensive from fossil fuels and even more expensive from bio-fuels. The fuel cell is very expensive. I suggest the use of aluminium air batteries as range extenders. The aluminium is a fuel and the spent aluminium hydroxide has to be sent back to the aluminium smelter to get the metal fuel back. The smelter can be powered by renewable electricity. Phinergy has a car that runs on aluminium in this way. The system would likely take up less space than super high pressure H2 cylinder and fuel cell. Recycling aluminium in this way is also expensive but the system has very high energy to volume density, so if you only use range extending every few weeks or so, this would be good. Ideally there would be a way for the home user to hoist the range extender out of the car when not in use to reduce the weight for daily commuting.
Phinergy also requires two liquid tanks (one pure water, the other holds the aluminum hydroxide). These tanks aren’t small, and require stopping at service stations to swap/recycle. The aluminum plates may last a long time, but the system as a whole requires an extensive infrastructure every 200 or so miles. So it solves nothing really.
A phinergy car requires a normal Lithium Ion pack for power, a Al-O2 pack for range extending, a water tank, a waste tank, and then all the normal EV electronics. Lots of expense and dependence on a non-existent infrastructure.
Might as well just go with a PHEV like the Volt, and rely on a ubiquitous gas infrastructure and deal with the relatively minor emissions profile.
Hydrogen is expensive, but this aluminum process you speak of (smelters, etc) is cheaper and more convenient? I’m curious to see direct comparison of numbers on this one.
Hydrogen is very cheap and already produced in large quantities.
Industry makes enough hydrogen right now to power hundreds of thousands of fuel cell vehicles.
Sources of hydrogen include natural gas (which we keep finding more of) and water, electrolysized by solar and recently using photo-electrical processes.
Toyota says that it will cost 17 cents per mile to fuel their FCEV and that the price may eventually drop to 10 cents per mile. There is no indication how much it would cost to run using clean hydrogen rather than reformed methane.
Those are not cheap miles.
An Al-Air battery could be a huge game-changer but it is still in development. Right now some issues make it look unlikely, and while I am sure they can be solved, the question is when. Here’s an article on Phinergy and Al-Air batteries:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/198462-new-aluminum-air-battery-could-blow-past-lithium-ion-be-refilled-with-water
Excerpt from above: “..plans for a 2017 debut), and aluminum is abundant and relatively cheap. Al-air batteries have actually been used in specialized military applications for years..”
Also, some of the challenging issues for Fuji Corp. are discussed here:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2015/01/20150109-fuji.html
From above: “…parasitic hydrogen evolution caused by anode corrosion during discharge; this has been a long-standing barrier to the commercialization of aluminum–air batteries…”
And take a look at the comments in the last article.
I haven’t seen much else. A lot of promising battery techs stay “promising” for a very long time so I am always hopeful but skeptical.
“The hydrated aluminum oxide solution produced during the battery’s normal operation would need to be recycled in some fashion,
it’s not clear that fresh water is as effective an aqueous solution as saltwater (meaning there might be specific need for one particular kind of solution). ”
Here is a battery you can recharge
“Williams Demo World’s First Sodium-ion Powered Vehicle”
http://www.electric-vehiclenews.com/2015/05/williams-demo-worlds-first-sodium-ion.html
Toyota is making fuel cells for the Mirai at a cost of $17,000 and the price keeps coming down.
Fuel cells are a very very simply technology. Just some plumbing and a high tech membrane. And they keep finding ways of reducing materials.
Where did you get that cost info from?
I don’t believe it for a second. At that price you could build peakers and backup units for $300-400/kW. That’s a $100B+/yr business.
Creative Commons (CC) article source: http://cleantechnica.com/2015/05/21/cautionary-tale-fuel-cells-germanys-fuel-cell-experts/