Fuel Cells in the Automotive Industry | femlabO Mu 1 tip hy lí C3 in Ntĩlll WHITE PAPER ON CHEMICAL ENGINEERING Fuel Cells in the Automotive Industry by Ed Fontes EvaNilsson c o M s o L COPYRIGHT 1994 - 2001 by COMSOL AB. All rights reserved. CHEMICAL ENGINEERING IN THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY Fuel Cells in the Automotive Industry The design of catalyst reactors has made the car engine substantially cleaner during the last two decades. Car manufacturers have applied large efforts in reducing the emissions of hazardous gases from the combustion engine. However it has still proven to be difficult to eliminate NOx and SOx emissions from this process. The chemical energy of gasoline is converted to mechanical energy via the production of heat in the combustion process of conventional car engines. The efficiency of this process is limited by the efficiency formula for the Carnot cycle. A more efficient process and one of the main candidates for power production in future cars is the new generation of fuel cells. These work principally as batteries do yet while batteries can be considered as batch reactors fuel cells are continuous reactors. In a fuel cell-powered engine the chemical energy in the fuel is converted to electrical energy and then to mechanical energy by an electric motor. The process by-passes the limitations of the Carnot cycle and the theoretical efficiency is substantially higher than that for the combustion engine. This implies that a fuel cell-powered car will be able to run for longer distances using the same amount of fuel compared to a conventional car. Carbon dioxide emissions are consequently lowered since smaller amounts of fuel are consumed for the same distance traveled. The low temperatures in the process practically eliminate the production of NOx and SOx. The development of fuel cell powered-vehicles has accelerated during the last five years. Competition between the different players is growing and the fight for a share of a potentially huge market has already started. Technological
