Advances in hydrogen cell technology for automobiles - Essay Example

Since 2003, Honda has been operating a 'Home Energy Station' on an experimental basis in Torrance, California. This station is works on alternative fuel technology while carrying out all the activities necessary for the home. Here hydrogen is generated from natural gas and heat and electricity requirements for the home are fulfilled using fuel cell cogeneration. Even a car in the home is powered by hydrogen cell. Such efforts have indeed shown results as well. The Carbon Dioxide emissions from such a house are stated to be 30 percent less than those for an average household that uses a gasoline and commercial electricity1.

If such efforts can be matched by other fuel efficient technologies, our environment would become much more pure and the looming threat of catastrophe in the form of global warming will surely subside.The amount of carbon dioxide that melts into the atmosphere as a result of our routine actions creates footprint of carbon. In fact at times, we unknowingly tend to perform some actions which lead to an increase in our carbon footprints on the environment, which proves detrimental for our own survival.

Inefficient use of energy, inefficient housing stock, using carbon emitting fuels in our cars, rampant industrial activities etc. are the key factors being blamed for an increase in carbon footprints. The society seems to have become wiser in many ways has now started widely discussing 'how carbon footprints can be effectively reduced by adopting an energy efficient lifestyle. Hydrogen cell technology, an upgrade on hybrid electric motor, is a promising technology which will provide pollution free travel for us in near future.

Efforts are on for such technology for quite some time now. The then US President George Bush had announced in 2003, an ambitious $1.7bn investment plan to turn US into a world leader for hydrogen powered automobiles (Twist, 2004). In fact the ongoing recessionary trends around the globe have impacted the automobile sector quite adversely and in UK there are demands from many quarters to provide stimulus for its sustenance. This seems to have provided a reason to the UK government to think about greener technologies.

Therefore while announcing a 2.3 billion rescue package for Britain's carmakers on January 28th Lord Mandelson commented that this is being done to pave the way for greener motor industry (Webster and Buckley, 2009). After the increasing concerns of carbon footprint, the automobile industry has experimented with a number of alternatives fuel technologies like electric vehicle, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) etc. and these technologies have certainly helped in reducing carbon from the vehicle emissions, but the hydrogen powered vehicle produces very low or zero tail-pipe emissions (May, 2004).

With governments and international bodies calling upon all concerned for reducing the carbon content, the vehicle manufactures have certainly taken a note. EU for example has proposed a target of 5.75 percent of transport fuel consumption for bio-fuels by 2010 (May, 2004, pp305). The technique involves extracting hydrogen from water or any other source. In a running vehicle the solar cells provide electric current for separating hydrogen from the stored water which is then used for producing torque for running the motor.

For a vehicle, the Tandem Cell technology uses two photo-catalytic cells in series which are coated with a nano-crystalline - extremely thin - metal oxide film. These cells capture full spectrum of UV radiation from sun. The novel coating then captures the electrons and passes on to conductors as electric current. Though, Hydrogen power can also be produced from hydrocarbons, like oil and gas, or coal but in that case the byproducts or the waste also becomes a source of pollution, so this method is not used