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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, @08:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @08:38PM (#533080)

    It's a bus! If you expect a bus to get the same mileage as a typical passenger vehicle then you've gone mad.