{"id":6805,"date":"2016-06-20T08:55:21","date_gmt":"2016-06-19T22:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=6805"},"modified":"2020-06-20T00:53:35","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T14:53:35","slug":"nissans-new-bio-ethanol-fuel-cell-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/blog\/nissans-new-bio-ethanol-fuel-cell-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Nissan\u2019s New Bio-Ethanol Fuel Cell Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NissanIt\u2019s the usual problem with new sustainable fuels*.\u00a0 On the one hand, the inventors have come up with a great new technology that\u2019s renewable but still produces lots of lovely energy that we can use to get our cars whizzing around the road.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, it would be a piece of cake to install this in the typical production car (well, in some cases, anyway!).\u00a0 On the other hand, using this technique requires a fair bit of infrastructure to be in place.\u00a0 You need to have bowsers that pump out the biodiesel or the ethanol, you need charging points for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles (and you thought finding a charging point for your smartphone was bad enough), and you need hydrogen refuelling stations for fuel cells.\u00a0 It\u2019s a real Catch-22 situation: the powers would be would install more of the infrastructure if there was more demand for these sustainable energy sources created by people like you and me buying vehicles than need the charging stations, etc.\u00a0 However, I, for one, am not going to buy a vehicle, no matter how eco-friendly it is, if I can\u2019t give it the juice it needs to get moving because the infrastructure is lacking.<\/p>\n

Things are slowly changing in the electric car and plug-in hybrid department.\u00a0 We\u2019ve already got an electrical grid that works pretty well most of the time and at least a chunk of the power is generated from renewables.\u00a0 Charging stations are popping up all over the show, which makes buying a hybrid or electric vehicle more attractive.\u00a0 We\u2019ve also got a fairly good history of using ethanol blends in our fuel thanks to our sugarcane industry, so it won\u2019t take that much to increase the amount of ethanol or biodiesel we use.<\/p>\n

The renewable clean technology that\u2019s been a bit slower to get off the ground has been hydrogen fuel cell technology.\u00a0 This is super-clean burning, producing only water vapour as \u201cexhaust\u201d but powering our cars on hydrogen has some drawbacks.\u00a0 Putting in the fuel cell into production cars at the factory is easy.\u00a0 Fitting in a hydrogen tank is a bit harder, as these things have to be large and as tough as gnarly old ironbark tree or tougher.\u00a0 Then you\u2019ve got the infrastructure problems, as hydrogen sources can\u2019t be pumped from your regular bowser, as it\u2019s a gas, not a liquid.<\/p>\n

However, just last week, Nissan <\/a>\u00a0announced a possible way to sidestep the infrastructure problem.\u00a0 They\u2019re in the process of researching and developing a new sort of fuel cell: one that uses hydrogen derived from bio-ethanol within the fuel cell itself to generate electricity to power a car.\u00a0 This is known as a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell or what Nissan has called its \u201ce-Bio Fuel Cell\u201d. This technology looks set to be released in countries where they already have a good source of ethanol handy as a byproduct of sugar or corn-growing industries.\u00a0 In other words, countries like Australia!<\/p>\n

The process works more or less like this: first, the ethanol or ethanol and water mix gets pumped from a regular bowser into a regular fuel tank.\u00a0 The ethanol goes through the reformer part of the system to become H2<\/sub> (chemically, ethanol is CH3<\/sub>CH2<\/sub>OH, so there\u2019s lots of handy hydrogen). At the same time, air comes in through the intakes, and the hydrogen and oxygen head for the fuel cell stack. \u00a0This generates electrical energy, which gets stored in the battery, which, in turn, powers the electric motor.<\/p>\n

The aim is to have a vehicle that\u2019s a nice, quiet electric car with no or very low emissions and diddly-squat of a carbon footprint (although the official Nissan press release <\/a>\u00a0didn\u2019t say what happens to the excess carbon and oxygen left over after converting the ethanol). With this sort of fuel cell, it\u2019s likely that Nissan will have a 100% electric vehicle that has better range than what\u2019s currently possible with the typical EV, such as Nissan\u2019s very own LEAF <\/a>.\u00a0 On top of this, there\u2019s no need for new infrastructure to supply the fuel and it won\u2019t take ages to fill up, unlike the situation with plug-in hybrids and EVs today, which take a fair bit of time to charge, so you have to plan your plug-in time to fit your schedule.<\/p>\n

It sounds like a real win-win situation: a low-emissions vehicle that uses sustainable fuel, is quiet, has decent range and is fairly quick to fuel up.\u00a0 It\u2019s not sure at this stage when Nissan will be putting these fuel cells into its vehicles, but it shouldn\u2019t be too far away, so watch this space!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* \u00a0 This was written before I spotted my fellow Private Fleet blogger’s post on the sustainable fuel issue.<\/a> Great minds think alike!\u00a0<\/em> http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/offers-zaim\/migcredit-dengi-v-dolg.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s the usual problem with new sustainable fuels*.\u00a0 On the one hand, the inventors have come up with a great new technology that\u2019s renewable but still produces lots of lovely energy that we can use to get our cars whizzing around the road.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, it would be a piece of cake to install this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6805"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11528,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6805\/revisions\/11528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}