Fuel Cell Cars - A Fight against Global Warming - Essay Example

Fuel Cell Cars- A fight against global warming? Introduction Global warming has become one of the major environmental issues today. Global warming cannot be considered as a natural disaster. It’s a man made disaster that has become a major issue of concern of human civilization at the present time. In the last twenty years scientific knowledge has led to the understanding that anthropogenic, human made actions were responsible for the changes on global climate. Those changes are a consequence of the emission and accumulation of greenhouse gases on the atmosphere. Human activities are increasing the natural levels of those gases, by emitting carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels such coal, oil, and natural gas; methane and nitrous oxide produced by agricultural activities and changes in the use land use; and by some industrial gases that do not occur naturally but are long lived in the atmosphere. Emissions of poisonous gases from vehicles are also constantly polluting the air. In fact, a large proportion of harmful gases in the atmosphere are being emitted from the vehicles. With the development of civilization, the rate of transportation has also increased. Today, most of the vehicles are run by fossil fuels, like petrol, diesel, coal etc. the burning of these fuels emit hazardous gases in the atmosphere and enhances the risk of global warming. In order to protect the Universes from the curse of global warming, the immediate need is to reduce the emission of those gases that are responsible for global warming. In order to reduce emission level, the prime requirement is to discover alternative sources of energy other than fossil fuel. The vehicles, therefore also need to be run by the energy whose production does not need petrol, diesel or coal. Scientists are experimenting several alternatives to the traditional source of energy for the vehicles. Fuel cell cars are being treated by many scientists and car making company as the greener versions of the modern day cars. It is being increasingly expected that these fuel cars will be able to reduce pollution level and offer great fight against global warming. But the issue of concern is how far these expectations will be materialized in reality. A number of questions relating to fuel cell cars will be addressed in this paper including the questions like what the concept of fuel cell cars is all about? What are its advantages and dis-advantages? And will it be able to provide a strong fight against global warming? All these questions will be addressed in the following sections of this paper. Fuel Cell Cars- The Concept Fuel cell car is a new technological concept in the transport world. To protect environment various alternative sources are being discovered and tested. People have realized that fossil fuels are not the only efficient source of energy for running cars. Among various alternatives, hydrogen fuel cell cars is becoming a attractive options for the car manufacturers as it has been tested that vehicles run by hydrogen fuel cell do not emit any poisonous gases in the air.1 Several car making companies including Genral Motors, Honda, Toyota have announced their plan to bring fuel cell cars into the market in near future. Many of the companies have already tested these types of cars to check their efficiency level.2 Fuel cell cars have drawn wide attention from the Americans and the Europeans. The United States has already made huge investment on the production of fuel cell cars.3 A fuel cell car has a number of similarities with a car run by battery4. In both of these types of cars, no internal combustion engine is required. In a fuel cell car, the fuel cells in which energy is stored in chemical form play the role of generating electrical energy from the energy stored in the chemicals. In this conversion process, water and heat are also created. The working of a fuel cell is quite similar to that of a battery except in one particular respect. The batteries are required to be recharged at regular interval, while fuel cells need no such research5. The fuel cells will work as long as the supply of fuels to those cells continues. In most of the cases, particularly in case of cars, hydrogen is used as the fuel in the fuel cells. In a fuel cell, the energy generation process is dependent on a chemical process rather than on combustion, and hence the level of emissions is quite lower in case of fuel cells.6 Advantages and disadvantages of Fuel Cell Cars Fuel cell car has got wide attentions from the carmakers because of a number of benefits that can be obtained from such an innovative car. These advantages are as follows: First, fuel cell cars, mainly those, which use hydrogen as the fuel, generate no harmful gases and hence in conventional terms the level of emission is zero. This happens because in case of these hydrogen fuel cell cars the only by-products that are emitted are water and heat.7 Second, energy efficiency level is quite high for these cars. According to some estimates the rate of emissions can be reduced by more than 20 percent if for the production of hydrogen renewable sources of energy are used in the place of fossil fuels. In U.K., the introduction of fuel cell cars is said to cut the emission of the hazardous nitrogen oxide as much as 70 percent.8 Third, the fuel cells used in these cars seems to be quite flexible in the sense that if a fuel reformer is placed within a car, then it can easily generate fuel from various sources including fossil fuels, fuels with alcohol base, different types of hydrogen compounds, and even from bio-mass.9 Although fuel cell cars seem to posses a number of advantages, it also has several dis advantages. First, a major problem with hydrogen fuel cell cars is that although the process of energy generation results in quite low or zero emission, the production of hydrogen involves quite substation emission of green house gases as at present in most of the cases for the generation of hydrogen fossil fuels and nuclear power are used.10 Second, at present costs associated with the production of fuel cell cars are quite high as the production process is not enjoying the benefits of economies of scale as currently these cars are being produced in small quantities.11 Third, fossil fuel cars face the problem of appropriate storage for the hydrogen fuel. In case of conventional cars, petrol or diesel can be stored very easily as they are liquid in form and do not need very big container. But hydrogen is a gas and therefore large containers are needed to store while traveling.12 Fourth, switching from conventional petrol or diesel-run cars to hydrogen fuel cars require completely new infrastructure for the companies as it would take quite a long time to build hydrogen fueling stations within the existing gas stations. Apart from this the channel through which hydrogen fuel would be distributed in different parts of a country has not been developed. To develop an appropriate network of distribution huge funds are required.13 Fuel cell cars and Global Warming The concept of fuel cell cars has been developed to reduce the level of emissions by the vehicles. Now the question is how far it will serve as an efficient alternative for conventional cars and reduce emission level? Of course, the emission level is far low or zero while traveling in a fuel cell car rather than in a conventional petrol pr diesel car as energy production from hydrogen fuel does not emit any hazardous gas into the atmosphere. But the major problem with these cars is that the current technique applied for the production of hydrogen fuel is not environment friendly. Like the conventional sources of energy, such as oil, natural gases, coal, or renewable sources like water, wind, sun etc., hydrogen in its pure from can not be obtained from the natural atmosphere in concentrated amount which simply implies that hydrogen needs to be produced. Hydrogen can be produced from different types of non-renewable and renewable energy sources. But currently oil, coal, natural gases are being utilized to produce hydrogen fuel. During the process of extracting hydrogen from these fossil fuel huge green house gases are emitted. If this production method is continued in future also then fuel cell car will not reduce the global warming problem. Unless and until this production method is replaced, it would be quite be equally hard to fight again global warming with these fuel cell cars as with the conventional cars.14 Conclusion The current technique employed for the production of the fuel for the fuel cells is not environment friendly. But there also exists several options to produce hydrogen apart from using fossil fuels. For example, wind or water can be used or hydrogen extraction. What scientists need to invent is appropriate technique to extract hydrogen from non-polluting sources so that the production process does not involve any global warming emissions. If such techniques are devised in near future, then there will be a revolution in the transport system which will strengthen the ongoing fight against global warming and provide a less polluted atmosphere. References: 1. Basu, S. (2007) Recent Trends in Fuel Cell Science and Technology. Springer. 2. Lucas, P. (2008). Fuel cell cars - a guide. Available at http://www.thegreencarwebsite.co.uk/fuel-cell-cars.asp [ accessed on 10th July, 2009] 3. Mench, M. M. (2008) Fuel cell engines. John Wiley and Sons. 4. Motavalli, J. (2001). Breaking gridlock: moving toward transportation that works. Sierra Club Books 5. Natural Resources Defense Council. (2004). Is Hydrogen The Solution? Available at http://www.nrdc.org/air/transportation/phydrofuel.asp [ accessed on 10th July, 2009] 6. Newton, P. W. (2008). Transitions: Pathways Towards Sustainable Urban Development in Australia. Springer. 7. Sandalow, D. (2007). Freedom from oil: how the next president can end the United States oil addiction. McGraw-Hill Professional. Read More