BMW's Approach To Hydrogen Fuel
When most automakers and gree-energy advocates invoke the use of hydrogen as a fuel, they are usually referring to hydrogen fuel cells. Hydrogen fuel cells are designed to create electricity by inducing a chemical reaction between hydrogen stored in the fuel cell and oxygen from the air. The energy created by this process is clean, but there are problems with making this technology widespread, such as cost, durability issues, and integrity of the fuel cell membrane. The German automaker BMW takes a different approach to hydrogen-powered vehicles, and their latest advancements are very promising.
A car that runs on hydrogen fuel cells is essentially an electric car that gets its power from the cells. BMW has created a test fleet of vehicles that uses liquid hydrogen to run an internal combustion engine that is very similar to a traditional car engine. This approach has been tried before and has been possible for years. The problem was that nobody could figure out a way to do it efficiently. You could burn liquid hydrogen in an iinternal combustion engine a decade ago, but you would have needed to burn three or four gallons to equal the energy output of one gallon of gasoline. A new BMW engine boosts the efficiency to the energy output of the best turbo-diesels. Essentially, one gallon of hydrogen could get you about 50-60 miles.
This technology has been built into BMW’s Hydrogen 7 cars. These are traditional 7 Series luxury sedans that are optimized to run on a mixture of traditional gasoline and liquid hydrogen. There is a new Hydrogen 7 Mono-fuel model coming out that runs completely on hydrogen. The only emissions this vehicle produces is water vapor. Not only that, but because the catalyst element is so efficient, the car actually cleans the air. Engines have an intake that sucks in air from the outside and uses it in the combustion chamber. The air coming out the exhaust pipe of the Hydrogen 7 Mono-fuel is cleaner and more pollutant-free than the air that went into the engine.
Sounds like a great car, but why aren’t they on the streets yet? the big problem is in delivery. Gasoline and diesel are fairly easy to transport and there is already an existing infrastructure throughout the world to deliver it to drivers. A hydrogen infrastructure, however, is virtually non-existent. There are hydrogen refueling stations scattered about the world, mainly near cities where automakers are running test fleets, but there are nowhere near enough of them to support a large amount of hydrogen vehicles. Once that infrastructure is in place, though, BMW will be ready.
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