Hi Folks,
I am posting a long description from the BMW website on their
future use of alternate energy. The best parts are near the
end. I couldn't get a hyperlink from their news section. Here goes, I apologize if this has already been posted :
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The world's first filling station for liquified hydrogen
Hydrogen is unquestionably the energy source of the 21st century.
As the world's first car manufacturer, BMW is involved in the world's
first public filling station for liquefied hydrogen.
Once again, BMW is thus setting an example of how futuristic
technologies can be developed in a realistic context.
The filling station at Munich Airport opened on 5 May 1999 by
Bavarian State Minister of Economics, Transport and Technology, Otto Wiesheu,
was developed and built by a consortium of reputable German companies.
Airport buses and cars fitted with appropriately matched engines,
rather than running on petrol or diesel, can now top up with a fuel which,
instead of undesirable emissions, releases nothing but hydrogen from the exhaust.
Hydrogen is an energy carrier that can be produced from water in an
environmentally compatible manner and during the combustion process combines
with the oxygen of the air to be condensed back into water.
„BMW banked on this energy carrier very early on and has a distinct edge
above all in the requisite engine technology", said Christoph Huß,
BMW's Board of Management administrator for traffic and environment.
The big advantage of hydrogen produced in an environmentally compatible manner
is that no additional greenhouse gas is developed.
More than a dozen reputable German companies have planned and
built the world's first fully automatic liquefied hydrogen filling
station at Munich Airport: ARAL, BMW, GHW/HEW, Grimm, HDW, IAW,
LINDE, MAN, Mannesmann, Neoplan, Siemens and Flughafen München GmbH. The safety
of the filling station has been tested and certified by
Bavaria's TÜV (Vehicle Inspectorate). The State of Bavaria sponsored the
34-million deutschmark pioneering project at 50 percent.
This is the first project world-wide to test innovative technologies
under the tough operating conditions of an airport: The production
and storage of hydrogen as a compressed gas or - at minus 250°C -
in a liquid state and refuelling by means of robots.
For the foreseeable future, though, this high-tech filling station will
see only very few customers, for hydrogen produced in an environmentally
clean manner is still significantly more expensive than petrol or diesel.
„What is now necessary, is the clear political will to make this ecologically
very meaningful technology succeed also from an economic perspective",
said Christoph Huß, BMW's Board of Management administrator.
BMW developing petrol engine fuel cell in cooperation with DELPHI Automotive Systems
Joining forces with DELPHI Automotive Systems, the largest automotive supplier in
the world, BMW is developing an entirely new type of fuel cell able to generate
electricity out of petrol. Since this innovative energy converter uses
conventional engine fuel, it does not require any other source of
energy such as methanol and therefore does not call for any elaborate
change in on-board technologies and in the network of filling stations.
The new fuel cell is called SOFC for short or Solid Oxide Fuel Cell and
converts hydrogen into electricity at a temperature of approximately 800
degrees Celsius or 1470 degrees Fahrenheit via a circonium oxide ceramic transformer.
The first step in this process of conversion is to evaporate the petrol,
obtaining hydrogen through a splitting process in a reformer also operating at
roughly 800 degrees Celsius. This hydrogen then reacts with oxygen in the
air fed in during the process, generating electricity and, as a
waste product, water.
Compared with the proton-exchange-membrane fuel cell (PEM) generally still
proposed today, which in theory may also be supplied with hydrogen via a
reformer running on petrol, the SOFC is far less sensitive to impurities in the
reforming process. A further advantage is that it does not require any expensive
precious metal electrodes. Accordingly, the SOFC is clearly superior to the
PEM, especially as the latter is subject to the further restriction that it
should preferably only be run on pure hydrogen. With the Solid Oxide Fuel Cell,
on the other hand, motorists will not have to wait until a comprehensive and
dense hydrogen supply infrastructure is in place.
Replacing the battery and the alternator in the long term
Fitted in BMW passenger cars, the Solid Oxide Fuel Cell will
serve to supply electric energy to the onboard network, thus doing the job for
which it is most suitable: generating electricity at a high level of
efficiency and operating independently of the engine. The actual drive power
for the vehicle itself should in BMW's opinion still be provided by the
combustion engine with its well-known advantages.
In future, therefore, the compact fuel cell battery will merely take the
place of a conventional lead battery. With the fuel cell exceeding the power
output and service life of a lead battery by far, however, this fuel-cell
APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) is not only able to supply power to all
conventional electrical power-consuming items in the car, but also
allows new functions such as air conditioning when the car is at a standstill.
In the long term the fuel cell may even be able to replace the electrical
alternator in the car and allow the use of a much smaller lead battery
only required for starting the engine and in emergencies. The introduction
of the SOFC therefore marks the beginning of a new era with cars
requiring more and more electric power in future.
BMW's first hydrogen cars with fuel cell in the year 2000
While the ongoing development of the SOFC in the petrol-engined
automobile will still take another five years or so, BMW will
be the first car maker in the world to introduce a PEM fuel
cell battery for generating electric power in the car as a
standard feature. Starting next year, BMW will be building a small
number of 7 Series saloons with a hydrogen-powered combustion engine
for the worldwide EXPO 2000 Clean Energy Project. Already carrying liquid
hydrogen on board for the power unit, these cars will be fitted with
a PEM fuel cell generating electric power out of hydrogen and air.
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