Economical electric forklifts have been in use for years. The new batteries will make them even more useful. But you can't stop big energy because they control the left and the right of big gov't. They are both working together to change our addiction from petroleum to hydrogen because hydrogen comes from natural gas (big oil's other product) and because we can't economically produce, compress, store and transfer hydrogen at home like we can with electricity. The “Hydrogen Economy” is just one big SCAM http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/h_scam.htm It doesn’t matter that pure electricity is 4x more efficient that hydrogen. The fact is that we're their servants as long as they can keep us addicted to their products. Ask any doctor, pharmacist or drug dealer about addiction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction They are both deathly afraid that we won’t need them anymore.

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Tim,

Why do you attack it? Have you ever used a fuel cell forklift?

I've driven several types of forklifts in our warehouses. The fuel cell forklift (and other industrial trucks) is a great solution, especially compared with the alternatives:

1) No local emissions (compared to propane)
2) Refuel in 5 minutes (try that with your battery)
3) No need to keep a rack of spare batteries charging (industrial batteries are expensive!)
4) No need to change batteries during a shift (high rates of injury on the warehouse floor)
5) Operation 24/7 (no need to leave it plugged in all night)
6) No capacity fade (battery loses over time)
7) No power fade (battery loses over time)

As well, hydrogen is a byproduct of several industrial processes - in Vancouver, for instance, the fuel cell forklifts at the airport are fueled from hydrogen that is a waste product of pulp and paper production. Steel mills also vent hydrogen, and work is being done to capture that.

Hydrogen enables many solutions, and this is just the beginning. Companies who are buying fuel cell forklifts now are beyond the demonstration phase. It is a product that has clearly proven itself superior to the alternatives, and hard nosed business managers realize they can increase safety, productivity, and cut costs by using hydrogen forklifts.

Hydrogen can and will be an important part of our environmental and transportation future. I'm looking forward to its widespread use.

Thanks,

James

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James I'll answer your question to Tim for you.
If you had read his link you would see that:
1) There are gobs of emissions in the generation of the electricity that does the hydrolysis or natural gas reformation, then the transport, then the compression, then the conversion to electricity that are all wasteful and far far less efficient than simple electricity in a battery.
2) You still have to refill it.
3) Energy loss through leakage of a battery is an issue, but only if the batteries sit idle a long time, and it is doubtful that makes up for the losses in hydrogen management or production.
4) The fuel cell materials are still very expensive, they include platinum.
5) You have to build a hydrogen transport infrasture.

What we really need are better batteries. Instead we keep pursuing the low efficiency solution of hydrogen fuel cells that even fuel cell scientists think is a waste. Read this:
http://www.efcf.com/e/reports/E17.pdf (short and easy to read)

So, maybe this is a marginal short term solution for fork lifts, we remain disappointed that so much money and time continues to be put into making the inefficient hydrogen fuel cells happen rather than solving our battery problem which would be leaps and bounds more efficient for cars (it already is even if our existing batteries don't have enough capacity to make everyone happy).

We will continue to dump on this until everyone realizes it.

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Bush just loves his little photo ops.

H2 fuel cell forklifts are a very bad idea. Compared to standard battery forklifts, H2FC forklifts are more expensive to buy and operate, need more maintenance, and are less efficient. The only advantage is it refills faster than battery charges. However, for the price of a H2FC forklift fleet, a company could buy twice as many battery forklifts, have half of them charging, and save a bundle on operating costs. To save even more, the company could have spare batteries and swap them. (Yes, they are heavy, but that is what cranes and forklifts are for!)

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I agree, this is a short and easy read, which is why it is not of much value except to people who don't want to read long and detailed analysis. Congratulations on finding one paper on the internet from one point of view that shows a poor future of hydrogen.

It's mostly wrong. Dr. Bossel writes this from an extremely one-sided point of view. Look at the assumptions he makes: Fuel cell efficiency 40%, all hydrogen liquified, then delivered.

Fuel cell vehicles are over 60% efficient tank to wheels (Honda, GM, Daimler, all showing high efficiency numbers), in the early stages of work. This is documented by EPA, DOE, NREL, and others around the world. Don't let Dr. Bossel fool you.

As for hydrogen transport, the vast majority of hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles is today and will be transported in gaseous form, not liquid. Everyone knows liquifying hydrogen is -30% drop in efficiency. That's why it's not a good idea. So why does Dr. Bossel include it in his efficiency chain? Because it makes it look bad. I could do the same thing to electricity by saying that all electricity comes from a 1920's coal fired powerplant with 15% efficiency and no pollution controls. Is it possible? Yes. Is it correct? No.

If you do the calculation of CO2/mile, using real numbers, with hydrogen made from natural gas, fuel cell vehicles are on par with electric vehicles over the entire US. Better in some states, worse in a few, but as a whole on par. Hydrogen from renewables is better, of course, just like with electricity. Better in some instances, because you can gassify biomass to hydrogen, but you need to burn it to make electricity.

Hydrogen enables renewables by performing grid leveling and long distance transporation functions that electricity on its own cannot accomplish.

So why not go for the solution that gets you long range, short refueling, no capacity loss? With vehicles that don't need to carry an extra thousand pounds of battery?

And so what if fuel cells include platinum? There is platinum in your catalytic converters in cars. Does it increase the price? Yes. Can you still buy a car? Yes. The platinum loading of a modern fuel cell stack is quite low. This is not the constraint. The value of the copper in the current collectors of a large format lithium ion battery pack would be similar to the value of the platinum in a new compact PEM stack.

Sorry, but to get a true picture of hydrogen and fuel cells and electricity, you need to dig deeper than Dr. Bossel. As a society, we need both hydrogen and electricity for our transportation future. I look forward to having them both.

Thanks,

James.

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James, I used to have high hopes for hydrogen cars, too, but then I got the facts, and realized that H2 is a very bad automotive fuel.

Unlike you, I actually read the Bossel report posted on the web at:
http://www.physorg.com/news85074285.htm
(BTW, the link Tim provided was to a paper written by Alice Friedemann, not Bossels.) Dr. Bossel compared 3 power options: Compressed H2, Liquified H2, and Battery Electric. He included Liquid H2 as some companies have been promoting it, and it is somewhat less bulky than compressed H2.

Even 1920s era coal fired electric plants were more efficient than 15%. Thanks to large cooling units that improve the thermodynamics, they were 35-45% efficient.

Only Honda has claimed a "tank to wheel efficiency" of 60%, and only on their newest FCX prototype. All of the other H2 FC efficiency figures I could find, including ones from H2 promoters like RMI, state a 50% efficiency for H2 PEM fuel cells, for a 40% "tank to wheel" efficiency. Bossel couldn't have included that Honda efficiency figure, it was only announced after he had published!

Some real efficiency calculations comparing H2 FC cars to EVs, both getting energy from Natural gas: Reforming of methane to make H2 70%, compression 90%, transport 80%, fuel cell 50%, controller and motor 90% = overall 23% for H2FCV. GE Combined Cycle turbogenerator running on methane 60%, grid transportation 90%, battery and charger 85%, controller and motor 90% = overall 41% for battery EV. Sorry, battery electrics win, nearly half the CO2 emissions using the same fuel source and similar size vehicles. Ahh, but what about coal? Well, coal can and has been used to make H2 as well as electricity. The efficiency results would be similar - 31% for battery EV, 16% for H2FCV, when fueled by coal.

While H2 electrolysis and fuel cells could perform "grid leveling", batteries could do it too, at a lower cost, a higher efficiency (85% vs 30%), and taking up less space.

LiIon batteries can already equal the driving range of H2FC, are no heavier than the high pressure storage tank and fuel cell (weighs less than Hydride storage!), are less expensive and more efficient. The only advantage left to H2 is faster refueling, but not by much - fast charging is now possible.

As for Platinum, well, catalytic converters need very little, but much more is needed for automotive PEM fuel cells. I remember an announcement just 3 months ago - a price drop for a 1 Kw fuel cell to only $5,500 making it $5.50 per watt - more expensive power than solar cells! Imagine what a 30 Kw fuel cell costs! Sorry, but the cost of the platinum in a fuel cell is several times more than the cost of copper (and Lithium) in a LiIon battery pack - and the fuel cell needs almost as much copper as well!

In case you didn't realize it, all of the H2FCV research programs are now augmenting the fuel cells with LiIon batteries, as it allows the use of smaller fuel cells thus cutting costs. Both Ford and GM are planning future vehicles to run mainly on LiIon batteries for local travel, with small H2 fuel cells only used as a possible range extender for those rare long trips - that is, if they can be made cost competitive with IC engines. A big "If".

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Chris M,

Sorry, but I've read Bossel's papers, I understand them, and they are somewhat right but mostly wrong. Do you see them being referenced in any serious scientific publication? No. Don't search the internet only for papers that prove your own point of view, as the result is inherently self limiting in scope. Search for real data, and calculate the result.

Note that Bossel does not include the efficiency of DISCHARGING the battery in his EV chain (86% -90%), nor the self discharge loss of the battery (~95%). Yet he is careful to estimate on the LOW side and include everything on the hydrogen chain. It's academically dishonest, and he knows it himself. But would he ever tell you? No.

For the approaching 60% efficiency comment, read the NREL reports of the DOE Hydrogen Program which include work by GM, Ford (Ballard), Daimler (Ballard), Hyundai (UTC). And Honda's published papers.

I agree with you that if you generate electricity from natural gas or renewables, then electrolyze water, that charging an EV battery is more efficient. But that's not the model to which to compare. As well, charging an EV battery does not solve the other problems around renewables on the grid, or energy storage in general.

Look at natural gas from SMR, and don't take your efficieny numbers from Bossel. Calculate them yourself, if you like. Transport closer to 95%, not 80%. Fuel cell efficiency closer to 70%, not 50%. 90% for vehicle is about right, similar to EV.

Now where do you have a natural gas turbogenerator at 60% efficiency? There is ONE generator scheduled to come online in California in 2008. Claiming this efficiency for natural gas generation is a bold faced lie (from Tesla's website?). Are you charging from that today? No. Typical generation on the grid today from natural gas is in the realm of 39%. I gave you the links to calculate that yourself in a prior post. Here they are again:

Total electricity generated from natural gas:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html

Total natural gas consumed in generating that electricity:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat4p1.html

Divide one by the other with appropriate unit conversions, and you come to 39% efficiency of generating hydrogen from natural gas.

So now calculate the CO2/mile, total energy used, or whatever your measure between EVs vs FCV, and you will find them basically the same across the US. Both way better than the current situation, and both better than PHEVs.

Here is a tool for you to use for this calculation:

http://www.transportation.anl.gov/software/GREET/

Anyone can make an efficiency chain to prove their own point if they skew the numbers to their own point of view, and that's what Bossel does.

The key is to make it real, and apply it in practice, and that's what Honda, Toyota, Daimler, etc are doing.

Is hydrogen a perfect solution? Absolutely not. Does it solve more problems and create more opportunities than any other solution proposed? Yes.

I'm looking forward to both EVs and FCVs as part of our transportation mix. They are complimentary technologies, not adversarial. But their evaluations need to be based on facts, not fictions, and definitely not based on Bossel's or Tesla's opinions.

Thanks,

James

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Sorry, but Fuel Cells for small electrial devices and stationary and portable power plants are coming and will be moving forward at a rapid pace in 2008. One company I believe that will be the Intel of this industry will be Pacific Fuel Cell Corp. They are currently making Bipolar Plates for most of the major fuel cell companies that supply fuel cells for many companies around the world. PFC will be rapidly ramping up to become a one stop shopping company that will supply, bipolar plates, membrane elctrode assembly, membranes and gas diffussion layers. Their MEA now uses less than 25% Platinum, making it affordable while exceeding the performance of current state-of-the-art MEAs for methanol fuel cells.
Overnight, the company has become an important part of supply chain for the fuel cell market. As worldwide alternative energy initiatives move forward, fuel cells will be in demand, and the company is poised to rise and become the Intel of the fuel cell industry.
Their goal:
Pacific Fuel Cell's fuel cell components provide higher performance with reduced cost. In other words, PFC's fuel cell components provide the best price/performance ratio available. Pacific Fuel Cell's fuel cell components will enable a new generation of superior fuel cells. PFC's goal is to put its fuel cell components inside every fuel cell in the world

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I too support the investment in hydrogen technologies. We need these options. No one's trying to force batteries out of the marketplace, but frankly fuel cells and hydrogen often make better products (taking the production, distribution and use all into account). We need to continue to work to make sure that these new hydrogen products have a chance to get to market so they can show in a more long-term way, the huge benefits these technologies have to offer.

James, your words are right on and since I have also *actually* read Bossel's papers (and talked with him) I too recognize that although there is much that is true in his paper, he tweaks many of the efficiency arguments to his liking. They certainly don't reflect reality.

One of you was trying to make the claim that hydrogen/fuel cells will never be economical in forklifts/pallet trucks? Wrong. They are. According to a recently release study by Battelle (funded by DOE), the lifecycle costs for hydrogen and fuel cells in large, sit down forklifts are on par with battery technology. Think the next generation fork lifts will be cheaper? I think so.

How about pallet trucks? They have a similar capital cost (maybe a little more), but HALF the operational costs of batteries. HALF?! That leads to overall lifecycle costs that are also about half. Those are real numbers. Sorry ChrisM. This is not an argument you can win.

Want proof, check out slide 19 here:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/education/pdfs/mahadevan.pdf
And for the full report:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/pemfc_econ_2006_report_final_0407.pdf

Like James said:
Is hydrogen a perfect solution? Absolutely not. Does it solve more problems and create more opportunities than any other solution proposed? Yes.

I hope more people can open their eyes and realize that we all need to be working on many solutions here. Hydrogen and fuel cells offer many of them.

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Batteries are not the right answer. They have an important place but
they are not the total answer. Today and even projecting the expectations for the future of advanced Li ion batteries, batteries will not be cost competitive for transportation ("well to wheels") relative to fuel cells and hydrogen. And they certainly cannot give the USA energy independence. Further, it has been shown that today, with our dependence on coal for generating electricity, going to batteries will be worse for the environment than making and using hydrogen from natural gas. And again, batteries cannot do it for anything but small, city cars. With regards to "super capacitors"
it seems way too premature to rely on them to set the world on any
sustainable course.

Bossel refers everything back to a percentage of the HHV of hydrogen and tries to make you think this is efficiency. It's not!

Today's conventional electrolysis units operate at better numbers than what he has referenced. Conventional industrial electrolysis available today (which has not been optimized for efficiency) can operate at about 1.6 volts (Norsk Hydro). This corresponds to about 76% efficiency. The Germans Hot Elly project demonstrated true efficiencies in excess of 90%!

Regarding compression, most industrial electrolysis units today operate at 20 to 30 bar directly. This avoids the first, most costly and inefficient stage of compression. This feature involves an insignificant efficiency loss to the electrolysis. Units have been operated up as high as 200 bar. If you look at his compressor efficiency curve and start at 20 or 30 bar you will find that the compression losses are greatly lower than what he purports.

Regarding liquefaction, nobody likes liquefaction and it probably is a non-starter.

I have a study/report which seems to confirm the feasibility of using
existing pipelines with a relatively minimal impact.

Regarding on-site generation, his numbers just are not correct. He's taken a very bad case which should not be generalized.

Hydrogen may not be the ideal or most efficient conceivable energy
pathway but I think it is the best value for our society. That's not to say that other things may be better for specific or local situations, i.e. city battery cars.

The only place that BEV's make sense in the USA is for very, very (under 100 miles) short haul, lightly loaded, small vehicles, perhaps city cars. But it is unequivocally better to use hydrogen for anything that has a longer range or a big payload. (It remains to be seen as to what the "super capacitor" weight-energy storage numbers really come in at.)

First off, the amount of power required to move a vehicle is, to a large function, dependant upon the weight of the vehicle and its load. The amount of energy required is also a function of its range requirements. Think about a truck for a minute. A battery powered semi-trailer truck would be carrying a bigger load of batteries than it would be commodities! It turns out that fuel cells and hydrogen storage for any range over about 100 miles are significantly lighter than any conceivable Li-ion battery. I refer to a study conducted by H2Gen Innovations, Inc. And the longer the range and heavier the payload, the better the advantage of fuel cells and hydrogen over batteries.

The reason I mention trucking is that you have to realize that of all the oil we in the USA consume for transportation, only about 27% is used for automobiles and even less for city cars. So if you want to reduce the oil consumption, you need to pay attention to more than just city automobiles and batteries just won't hack it!

Don't get me wrong, fuel cells and the hydrogen economy have a long way to go but the hydrogen pathway is for sure the better way to go. And you know, batteries also have an important role to get us there especially with hybrids.

Yes, the point is how to create/get the hydrogen. In the future, energy must be generated via renewable sources. Even today, some claim that wind energy is cheaper than fossil fuels! To make hydrogen from fossil fuels especially oil, is only a transition activity. There may be some environmental advantage but it is not the final answer. It certainly would be foolish to make hydrogen from gasoline for use in a car.

Regarding the efficiency of using electricity to generate hydrogen vs stored in a battery, I urge you to re-examine the facts. The efficiencies for the hydrogen pathway are significantly higher than what some would have you believe.

It's not just an efficiency matter relative to fossil fuels. At $500 or $1000 a barrel, transportation using hydrogen produced from coal power plants or preferably, renewable sources via electrolysis definitely will be cheaper than using oil as a fuel. In fact, at about $3.50 a gallon for gasoline, even today you can run an IC engine on hydrogen cheaper. Even running on natural gas is better than gasoline.

It is even more advantageous if you consider the environmental impact of fossil fuels.

But the point here is that batteries are not the right answer. Besides distorting the efficiency facts for the hydrogen pathway, battery proponents have only addressed a small (city automobile) portion of the problem. Today and even projecting the expectations for the future of advanced Li ion batteries, batteries will not be cost competitive for transportation ("well to wheels") relative to fuel cells and hydrogen. And they certainly cannot give us energy independence. Further, it has been shown that today with our
dependence on coal for generating electricity, going to batteries will be worse for the environment than making hydrogen from natural gas. And again, batteries cannot do it for anything but small, city cars.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a strong advocate for PEM fuel cells but there are other types of fuel cells.

What I am saying is that, so far as I can see, renewable hydrogen (i.e. hydrogen generated from renewable sources) is the end game for the major part of the transportation sector. It gives us energy independence and a clean environment and will be cost competitive. Hydrogen also has a reasonable pathway to get us from where we are now to a better future.

Jay

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Jay,

Thank you for insightful and comprehensive comments.

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Pacific Fuel Cells sound fine for running small portable applications, where the high price per watt can be more easily justified. Note that these are running on methanol, a compact easy to handle liquid fuel that doesn't require high pressure tanks or cryogenic temperatures, unlike H2. Now, if they could just get the size up and the price per watt down enough to be competitive with batteries, they might be useful for vehicles. We'll wait and see if they can do that.

Patrick, I looked at those links to the marketing reports, and was not impressed. They arrived at those figures by overestimating the labor costs for swapping the batteries - a half hour to swap a battery? Don't think so! While they mentioned fast charging technology that eliminates battery swapping and dramatically cuts labor costs, they didn't put that into the calculations - it would make H2 look really bad. They included the costs of battery charger and spare battery facilities, but ignored the cost of H2 refueling equipment - Did they assume it would only take a minute to drive the pallet lift down to the local H2 filling station?

Looking at the details in the 2nd report, it was obvious that H2 PEM fuel cells cost more than batteries, and H2 fuel cost much more than electricity. Only the exaggerated labor costs enabled them to make H2 the preferred option - for pallet lifts only. For "sit-down" forklifts, even labor costs wasn't enough to overcome the higher fuel cell price and much higher H2 fuel costs, so they proposed special government "incentives" to get companies to buy the more expensive H2 option.

Considering that most H2 will be made from fossil fuels (it's cheaper) and electrolysis/fuel cells are less efficient and use much more electricity (partially produced from fossil fuels), it is obvious - replacing battery forklifts with H2 forklifts will increase, not reduce, fossil fuel use and pollution.

Jay, you say that that LiIon batteries aren't cost competititve for transportation, yet you argue for H2 fuel cells and H2 fuel that costs considerably more! Don't be too embarrased, you're not the only one to make that mistake. All of the fuel cell car researchers are using LiIon battery packs to reduce the size and cost of the fuel cell. Ford and GM are planning to rely mainly on plug-in battery packs, with H2 fuel cells to be used only as range extenders on some models.

You are also sadly mistaken in assuming batteries are only good for small city cars. They were good enough for the EV1 and the Rav4EV, and battery tech has improved since then. There is the Tesla Roadster with 130 mph top speed and over 200 mile range. Phoenix Motors has an electric SUT. There are battery electric trucks with 100 to 150 mile range available for sale right now, not sometime in the future. You complain of electricity made from coal, overlooking the dramatic increase in clean renewable power, but ignore that H2 will be made from electricity or fossil fuels, including coal. You challenge Dr. Bossels figures, but have some rather questionable electrolysis efficiency figures of your own.

Regarding liquification: BMW, Linde, and Air Liquide are all in favor of liquid H2, as it is more compact than compressed H2. Of course, the rest of the H2 promoters are ignoring liquid H2 because of low efficiency, high price, and all the problems it causes.

While a long haul truck sized LiIon battery would be heavier than the equivalent H2 fuel cell and pressure tank, the H2 tank would be larger - even compressed, H2 is a very bulky fuel. Neither LiIon or H2 will be the primary fuel for long haul trucks (though LiIon will be used in hybrid trucks!), but we will see biodiesel, maybe solid oxide fuel cells running on hydrocarbon fuels, perhaps even Li-Air cells. The ultimate would be "powered roadways" that would provide electricity on the move and eliminate having to haul around large quantities of fuel.

While H2 might someday be cost competitive or even cheaper than petroleum fuels (it isn't now) it will always be much more expensive than electricity. The future is electric.

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