Article_1152_Fuel%20Cell%20History%20part%202%20with%20illustrations.pdf

Fuel Cell History, Part 2

George Wand

Horse power. Truly amazing amounts of organic horsepower. Available everywhere,

in every village, in every town and city – a long time ago.

In New York City, during the late nineteenth century, between one hundred and fifty

thousand and two hundred thousand horses where pulling wagons to transport

everything the population consumed, and all the raw material needed for the

products and the freight the inhabitants of New York produced. People were moving

from the countryside to areas of commercial and industrial activity by the droves.

Horses also pulled the trams that transported the populace between their newly

constructed homes and their productive jobs in mushrooming factories. The

industrial revolution was in full swing, and the same was happening in cities and

towns all across the country, in America and in Europe.

Horses in such vast numbers left a lot of pollution in liquid and solid form on every

street they worked and travelled on, potentially attracting rats and insects, and thus

spreading diseases. Reports from America’s largest city inform us that up to 2,000

tons of horse manure had to be removed from the city’s streets on a daily basis.

Yes, I searched for and read the reports, and I also checked the math.

Not the 1800s, and not a horse-less carriage, but a transportation method in a

developing country.

Illustration courtesy of Auto Bild.

No wonder then, that one hundred years ago the world welcomed the automobile

with open arms as its environmental saviour, when the news of their invention

spread around the globe. Nevertheless, as we know now, a new type of pollution

replaced the old type; we just did not recognize it until decades later.

Cars and trucks were a novelty at first, showing up in small clusters here and there.

Then their numbers grew, they were faster than horses and became more reliable as

time went on. Naturally, wagon builders, blacksmiths and veterinarians decried the

lack of work, and warned that massive unemployment among their ranks would

undoubtedly follow.

Does this sound familiar? Remember, all the workers who made radio and television

tubes lost their jobs over time when electronic devices were developed. What’s

more, all the persons who built carburettors were displaced when fuel injection

became the norm in the automotive world more recently. You can surely think of

other examples; this is what we consider progress. However, life will always go on

and get even better than before, for all those who have been affected. The

population keeps increasing, and so will the number of available jobs. Jobs will

differ, but they will be created as technology changes.

And many of the men and women working in the oil fields now, will become

unemployed during the next generation, when the hydrogen economy takes hold.

But who produces hydrogen? Education has, and will continue to ready us for the

next step. And Mother Nature will provide us with another resource when the old

one diminishes.

Now, let’s catch up with fuel cell and hydrogen history.

As we know, one third of all automobiles in the first quarter of the twentieth century

were battery powered electric vehicles (EV). The ‘gas battery’, now known as the

fuel cell, had been invented, or more appropriately, discovered, a long time ago.

However, not all the pieces of a puzzle do fit together all of the time. Collectively,

humans are not really that smart, after all.

Sir William Robert Grove’s ‘innovation’ of the “gas voltaic battery” in 1839 produced

proof that electricity could be generated with hydrogen and oxygen. But when EVs

were relatively plentiful during the first two decades of the twentieth century and

well into the 1920s, nobody in the growing automobile industry seemed to remember

this. Porsche and other automotive pioneers produced and sold hybrid electric

vehicles (HEV) during the early years, but seemingly, nobody saw the potential of

Grove’s gadget for electric vehicles.

Grove’s invention was left to linger as just another scientific curiosity, because Volt

and Ampere meters to perform useful measurements were non-existent. Only now

and then, a scientist would come across the idea, and carry on where Grove’s

experiments had left off.

Since hydrogen (H 2 ) is the fuel of fuel cells, we ought to look at some early uses of

H 2 as a fuel in internal combustion engines as well as early applications of fuel cells.

As you may be aware, H 2 can be extracted from many sources, from coal, petroleum

or natural gas. Since the world must get away from the carbon emission of those

base stocks, the goal is to produce H 2 from water by electrolysis. The substantial

energy required for this process must come from renewable sources, like wind, wave

or solar power. These are now being developed along with fuel cells at the beginning

of the ‘Hydrogen Age’.

In part one of this series, I listed the exploits of Rivaz, but skipped Lenoir. Etienne

Lenoir patented his two-stoke engine in 1860, and he installed it in a three-wheel

wagon, named the “Hippomobile”, because its fuel -- hydrogen --, was electrolyzed

from water. French humour, I guess. He later experimented by running his engine

on different fuels, coal gas among them – the very first flex-fuel engine. (Is there

absolutely nothing new under the sun?) Lenoir built and sold almost 400 of these

engines, competing successfully with steam engines of the time.

A replica of Lenoir’s “Hippomobile”, the very first ‘flex-fuel’ pickup truck.

Illustration courtesy of the Louvre, Paris.

In 1874 science fiction writer Jules Verne predicted that the world would use water

as a fuel in the future – we are still working on that. And ‘Dr. Mirabilis’ had already

foretold ‘speeding wagons’ in the middle ages. (other than on the Autobahn, we are

being fined for doing that). I ask you; did these people in the old days have nothing

else to worry about, but to imagine what might happen in the far future? I am

struggling here just to get history into a meaningful sequence.

Fifty year after Grove’s experiments, in 1889, Charles Langer and Ludwig Mond, tried

to build an apparatus that would function to create electricity with air and coal gas.

At about the same time, William White Jaques conducted similar research, using

different materials. All three of these scientific experimenters have been credited

with being the first to use the term “fuel cell”. (I believe it was one of the

bureaucrats in the patent office, who wanted to make a name for himself). Oh, the

vagaries of history.

In addition, at about this time, the steam engine was occupying most inventors’

minds, time and resources.

And then, suddenly, the newfangled internal combustion engine (ICE) was in the

news; that is, it could be observed at many exhibitions and at World Fairs, and it

fascinated the general public of the time. Converting horse carriages to ‘horse-less’

was the goal of inventors and entrepreneurs. Steam-vehicles, battery-electric cars

and combustion-engine automobiles vied for domination well into the 1920s. We all

know which one came out ahead; in large part, because the flourishing oil companies

made it easy to obtain petroleum fuel.

As early as 1923, Scottish biochemist and geneticist John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

presented a paper to Cambridge University about the advantages of hydrogen as a

fuel. He had the foresight to warn that the plentiful deposits of coal and oil would

come to an end, and that industry should prepare for the use of alternative fuels.

J.B.S. Haldane suggested to make use of wind-power to electrolyze hydrogen and

oxygen from water. In his opinion, Great Britain could satisfy its increasing energy

demand with H 2 mixed with petroleum products as a fuel for transportation needs.

Is it not a strange, but reoccurring fact that society habitually disregards visionaries

and innovators during their own time?

Remember, this was 1923, and J.S.B. was neither an automotive executive, an

environmental advocate nor had he any direct interest in the industries affected by

what he anticipated. Eighty-plus years later, we know how right he was, and how

“not worth mentioning,” Haldane’s hypothesis was perceived by his contemporaries.

In the meantime, nevertheless, people in different places had not given up on

hydrogen as a fuel. A great deal of H 2 research occurred during the 1930s. This

proved to be the decade that really put hydrogen research into favour with the

scientific community.

One attempt which received little publicity, was by the Norsk Hydro Company in

1933. The Norwegian power producer modified one of their small trucks to run on H 2

instead of gasoline. They installed an on-board reformer to extract hydrogen from

ammonia. It was cumbersome, but it foretold the future.

Pickup truck of the Norsk Hydro Company, converted to run on hydrogen gas.

Illustration courtesy of the Oslo Technical Museum.

Another almost forgotten fact is Sikorski’s experimentation with hydrogen-powered

engines in helicopters. After building fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft in Russia,

he fled to the USA in 1917 during the Bolshevik Revolution. Other Russian

immigrants helped him financially to organize the Sikorski Aviation Research firm in

1938. Igor Ivanovitch Sikorski was able to persuade the US government to front a

two million dollar budget for further trials on vertical take-off and landing aircraft

(VTOL). He also proposed using liquefied hydrogen as a fuel for aircraft.

By this time, one hundred years of research and experimentation had been applied

to this infinitely abundant fuel. Scientist and industrialists had tried to find ways to

utilize hydrogen’s potential to propel machines on land, on water and in the air.

Engineers and experimenters around the world did not let go of the idea that a way

would be found soon to tame nature’s gifts to humans.

Please, be aware that it is nearly impossible to draw a straight time-line through the

infancy of two closely related activities of combining fuel and machine. Repeating

and overlapping experiments, discouraging results and promising successes,

different personalities in various countries doing similar tasks almost simultaneously,

just as it happened with Daimler and Benz, make this a daunting assignment.

Who would have thought that it would require almost another century of research

and development, before fuel cells and hydrogen would come close to being “ready

for market”?

During the decade before World War II, Rudolph Erren and Franz Lawaczeck were

very influential in hydrogen research in Germany. ‘Frank L.’ was a turbine designer,

and he had been sketching and endorsing hydrogen fuelled turbine cars for more

than ten years. He collaborated with the American J.E. Noegerath and the German

Hermann Oberth on work leading to the use of liquefied H 2 as a rocket fuel.

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: