Hydrogen powered fuel cells hold great promise for the environment because heat and water vapor are their only by-products. The problem is that you need hydrogen, and that isn’t readily available yet. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Greg Dahlmann reports – engineers at General Motors say they’ve found a solution:
Transcript
Hydrogen
powered fuel cells hold great promise for the environment because heat and water vapor are their only by-products. The problem is that you need hydrogen, and that isn’t readily available yet. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Greg Dahlmann reports…. engineers at General Motors say they’ve found a solution:
The hydrogen economy is still off in the distance, so the engineers at GM turned to what they say is the next best thing — gasoline. The automaker recently revealed an S-10 electric pick-up with what the company is calling the first-ever driveable gasoline powered fuel cell. Matt Fronk is the chief engineer with GM fuel cell systems.
“Gasoline is a really good option because the infrastructure is already out there… and then also from our perspective, the technology can also be used with natural gas.”
The key to using gasoline in a fuel cell is a
piece of equipment called a reformer. It processes the gas into its
constituent parts of hydrogen and carbon. The hydrogen goes to the fuel
cell and the carbon is mixed with air to form CO2. While not as clean as a
hydrogen fuel cell, Fronk says the system would qualify as an ultra-low
emissions vehicle, and be about 40% more fuel efficient than a comparable
internal combustion engine. GM hopes to have the technology in production
by 2010.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Greg Dahlmann.