cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/31642688
161grams = 5kwh+ of heat energy or close to 3kwh of electric only energy in a fuel cell.
For drones, ebikes, powerstations, this would be higher electric weight density than batteries. And solves ebike/powerstation charging on the go problem.
Now they just need to solve the energy consumption and cost parity questions surrounding green hydrogen.
And no, burdening taxpayers with financing nuclear reactors to produce “cheap” (read: subsidized) energy/pink hydrogen does not count.
I’ve recently heard about natural H2 reservoirs for the first time. If that turns out to have potential, I guess it might be the saving grace H2 in land transport applications. Although that’s kind of like using fossil fuels except without the CO2 emissions.
You still need to either take an additional cartridge or find energy infrastructure.
Also, wouldn’t you need an entire hybrid drivetrain in your ebike to make this work?
So, I guess portable H2 tanks don’t solve any issues for cyclists/powerstation users or am I missing anything?
H2 only FC ebikes are not well developed or popular yet. Drones with FCs are actively developed as density/weight is a huge factor for range. Very small fuel cells, 500w or 1000w have applications in powering a home (with solar supplement) because they can run 24/7 and charge batteries. Hooking up torches or burners to these cannisters can also provide clean indoor cooking or heating a box of sand/water in a room.
For an ebike, it is touring/camping applications that this really enables. Charging a battery when you need extended range, and it becomes worth the extra weight. Even a 100w fuel cell slow charging a spare battery while riding is big range extension, and provides overnight full charge. Combustion cooking and heating is fine for high supplementary energy.
A H2 economy would have these cartridges in similar locations to swappable propane tanks.
Toyota research and products are ahead of their time relative to cheap green H2. This is an advance over using 300bar “paintball tanks” by going to 525bar, and it looks a bit like an apple product design. Needs far more electrolysis production capacity and deployments. The global project pipeline is long though, so we should get there. Current focus is on large scale electrolyzers with specific offtakers which is slow, but a step towards broader distribution.
I’m assuming the ebikes they mean would use a fuel cell instead of (or augmenting) a battery. Just a guess, though.
Fuel cells produce electricity, not motion. The electricity is then usually buffered in a small battery, so the fuel cell can produce at optimum efficiency even though the requirements may change quickly. At least that’s how the Mirai and other modern H2 vehicles work.
Alternatively, you can simply burn H2 in a motor but that’s supposed to be a lot less efficient.
A kinda doubt it. A PEM fuel cell usually has a small amount of very expensive elements (like platinum) so I doubt they would be particularly feasible for something like an ebike.