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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday June 29 2017, @04:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the add-baking-soda-for-the-lulz dept.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40403351

"We've created the world's first bus that runs on formic acid, which is a much cheaper solution than hydrogen, yet it delivers the same environmental benefits," says Lucas van Cappellen from Team Fast, a spin-off company from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. [...] Formic acid is found in nature, delivered in the stings and bites of ants and other insects - the Latin word for ant is formica. And this simple carboxylic acid (chemical formula HCOOH) is already used in textiles and leather processing, as a livestock feed preservative, and is also found in some household limescale removers.

[...] But Team Fast has found a way the acid can efficiently carry the ingredients needed for hydrogen fuel cells, used to power electric vehicles. The fuel, which the team has dubbed hydrozine (not to be confused with hydrazine), is a liquid, which means you can transport it easily and refill vehicles quickly, as with conventional fuels. The difference is that it is much cleaner. "The tailpipe emissions are only CO2 and water," explains Mr van Cappellen. "No other harmful gases like nitric oxides, soot or sulphuric oxides are emitted."

To prove the concept in the real world, an electric bus is set to hit the road in the Netherlands later this year, where it will shuttle between running on conventional bus routes and appearing at promotional events and industry fairs. The bus has an electric drive system, developed by bus builder VDL, that receives additional power from the formic acid fuel cell system mounted in a range-extender trailer, towed behind. "Our tank is around 300 litres, so we will extend the range of the bus by 200km (180 miles). However, we could of course make the tank bigger very easily," says Mr van Cappellen.

[...] "In a reactor, water and CO2 are bonded using sustainable electricity. This is a direct, sustainable electrochemical process," explains Mr van Cappellen. The hydrozine is then broken down by a catalyst into hydrogen and carbon dioxide inside a piece of kit called a reformer that Team Fast is attempting to patent. Its newly designed reformer is a tenth of the size of reformers of the past, which is why "it is now applicable in transport applications for the first time". The hydrogen is then added to a fuel cell where it reacts with oxygen to generate the electricity that powers the electric motor.

[...] "It costs about 35,000 euros (£30,000) to convert a conventional petrol filling station to a hydrozine filling station, a process that essentially involves replacing the pipes and coating the tanks," says Mr van Cappellen. As such, it is "100 times cheaper" to roll out a fuelling network for hydrozine than for gaseous hydrogen, he maintains.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @06:57PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @06:57PM (#533039)

    >Perhaps this bus could be fitted with a larger fuel tank than what your car has?

    And it will waste even more energy lugging that tank around.
    School physics, man. It does not pay to forget it.

    Oh come on, this isn't a rocket. The mass of an empty 72-passenger bus is something like 8000kg. So the 300L tank, when full, will represent about 4% of the vehicle's total mass. The mass of the fuel has barely any effect on the vehicle's performance.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @08:21PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @08:21PM (#533066)

    But he didn't say the mass of the fuel, he said the mass of the tank -- for compressed fuels like hydrogen gas and CNG, tank mass can be substantially more than the fuel it contains, and you get to drag the tank mass around even when running on empty.

    So it's not an unreasonable concern about alternative fuel proposals in general; however, a quick google reveals formic acid is liquid at normal temperatures, and wouldn't require much different tankage than gasoline.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @08:54PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @08:54PM (#533092)

      So it's not an unreasonable concern about alternative fuel proposals in general; however, a quick google reveals formic acid is liquid at normal temperatures, and wouldn't require much different tankage than gasoline.

      You don't even have to google it. This fact is stated right in the summary:

      The fuel ... is a liquid, which means you can transport it easily and refill vehicles quickly, as with conventional fuels.

      This stuff probably does corrode steel so you might need to use different tank materials.

      I expect that the spill considerations will be different as well. Using formic acid as a fuel will presumably involve high concentration, and unlike gasoline you really don't want to spill that on yourself or breathe the vapours. On the flip side, it does not burn as easily as gasoline.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @10:27PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @10:27PM (#533133)

        If I wanted to defend my claim, I could point out the summary doesn't list a range of temperatures and pressures, and given the way everyone, quack or no, seems to have an alt-fuel idea, and a willingness to tout the benefits and ignore the downsides, one could reasonably distrust that a simple statement of fact ("is a liquid") is actually true for a reasonable enough range of conditions.

        But honestly? I googled formic acid first, and then when I came back to read the summary properly, i skimmed right over that statement. Oops.

        BTW, wikipedia says pure formic acid boils at just over 100°C, and freezes about 8°C -- the former is no problem, the latter may be an issue in cold climates. But I would assume we can obtain a practically low freezing point by either cutting it with water, or adding some other additive, so I didn't think it worth complaining about.

        Anyway, I thought cars these days were all using plastic fuel tanks. Venting (to allow for the spontaneous decomposition to H2O+CO) may be an issue -- gas tanks already are designed to vent overpressure, but now you have to worry about e.g. the paint near the filler cap being attacked by acid fumes.