Hydrogen cars taken for campus spin
The BMW Hydrogen 7 combines hydrogen with oxygen the same way a conventional car mixes air and gas.
BY DAWN LEVY
If it wasn't for a small button on the steering wheel labeled "H2" to designate the hydrogen molecule, you couldn't tell the two cars parked outside the Faculty Club from their gas-powered brethren. About 60 auto enthusiasts were among the first North Americans to take BMW's hydrogen-powered twin cars for a spin before the start of a May 16 panel discussion titled "Sustainable Energy Solutions."
The BMW Hydrogen 7 combines hydrogen with oxygen the same way a conventional car mixes air and fuel. But the car emits no pollutants, just water vapor. The car is part of a green effort by automakers including BMW and Mazda to build vehicles powered by hydrogen-fed internal combustion engines. Another strategy being pursued by at least eight automakers, and one that is the subject of Stanford research in the laboratory of Professor Friedrich Prinz, chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, is developing hydrogen fuel cells. While today's fuel cells are not economic to produce and cannot compete with the traditional combustion engine, opportunities exist for improving their price and performance.
At the symposium, attended by about 150 people, leaders from the oil, hydrogen and auto industries convened with academic and government leaders. Besides Prinz, participants included Erwin Huber, Bavarian state minister for economic affairs, infrastructure, transport and technology; John Geesman, California energy commissioner; Reinhold Achatz, vice president of Siemens Corporate Technology; Paul Bryan, president of Chevron Technology Ventures; Christoph Huss, senior vice president of BMW Group; and Joachim Wolf, executive director of hydrogen solutions for Linde Gas.
"You can produce hydrogen completely carbon-free," pointed out Prinz, who receives funding from the Global Climate and Energy Project to investigate ways to interrupt the natural electron transport chain in plant cells for power generation. "You just split water with sunlight." Plants use photosystem 2, a protein complex involved in photosynthesis, to do this with an efficiency greater than 90 percent, he said.
Hydrogen is an energy carrier. It can be used to make electricity, and electricity can be used to make it, Wolf said. "It's very important to speak about one common infrastructure," he said. "Hydrogen can be used in the internal combustion engine, and it's a must for the fuel cell. For the future, let's look to hydrogen."
While the hydrogen internal combustion technology is an important stepping-stone that's here today, Prinz, whose department has received funding from BMW over the years, said in an interview that the future may be fuel cells—electrochemical processors with no moving parts. "The advantage of a fuel cell is it has potentially higher energy-conversion efficiency," he said. What limits fuel-cell development today are the materials, especially for electrolyte membranes, he said.
BMW is about to produce 100 vehicles identical to the two hydrogen vehicles people test-drove last Wednesday. "This is not a research vehicle," said BMW's Huss, who said hydrogen addresses the challenges of air quality, global warming and energy security. "It's developed like any other BMW car in the world." While in principle automakers could consider engineering systems to run on 10 or 15 fuels, such as gasoline popular in the United States or diesel predominant in Europe or ethanol taking Brazil by storm, "in the long term, hydrogen is it," he said.
BMW's Hydrogen 7 sports two fuel tanks—one for hydrogen and one for gasoline in case the driver can't locate a hydrogen filling station. Participants debated whether it made sense to build hydrogen cars or hydrogen filling stations first. During a test drive, BMW spokesman Andreas Klugescheid said his company is taking a chance on building the vehicles despite a dearth of filling stations. "The egg is there, but the chicken is missing," he said. At the symposium, Wolf of Linde Gas pointed out, "There is a hydrogen infrastructure. We need to bring an industrial infrastructure into a public infrastructure. We have more filling stations than cars, so I think both sides are waiting."