Solid oxide fuel cell car?

Instead of making hydrogen and trying to store it, why not make it where you
need it, right in the car.

Converting biomass to ethanol requires very expensive plants limiting the
number of plants and requiring expensive transportation of the substrate.
Ethanol production also loses energy in the conversion process.

Stover (corn stalks after the harvest), Switch grass, sawdust, ect. can be
compressed into fuel pellets very effeciently. The machinery is inexpesive
and can be scaled to needed outputs very efficiently. You could make
pellets where the waste biomass or crop biomass is found eliminating the
very expesive transportation to a centralized plant. There are many people
burning such pellets for heat now.

During world war II, people developed wood gassifiers that took biomass and
converted it into CO and H2 and piped it directly to their carburator and
ran conventional gasoline engines. Gassifiers are simple, relatively
efficient and inexpensive.

Solid Oxide fuel cells can internally convert CO to H2 and make electricity.
Solid oxide fuel cells are becoming smaller, cooler and less expensive.

Instead of making expensive liquid fuels from cheap biomass or making H2
from expensive electricity or fossil fuels, why not combine technologies
creating cheap H2 from biomass right where it is needed, the vehicle.

Combining a pellet gassifier with a solid oxide fuel cell in a current
hybric vehicle should get you about 5 miles per pound of pellets. Using
ultra light components and next generation aerodynamics could raise that to
about 10 miles per pound. Pellets made of waste wood cost about $150/ton.
Creation of pellets from stover and switch grass should be in the same ball
park. That figures to about 10,000 to 20,000 miles on $150 worth of
renewable fuel. The only piece of the puzzle that is missing is commercial
production of small solid oxide fuel cells.

Switch grass produces between 5 to 10 tons of biomass per acre. One acre of
production coud fuel current technology hybrid cars about 50,000 to 100,000
miles. Using estimates from next generation ultra fuel efficient hybrids,
double those figures. Does anybody know how many miles were driven in
America last year?

As a side benefit, it places our local farmers in the fuel production
business both ensuring their livelihood and creating intense competition
limiting price gouging.

I have been searching the internet and have not seen anyone discussing this
particular combination of technology. I would love to buy such a vehicle.


Don Mead 3/12/2006


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