Honda Unveils All-New FCV CONCEPT Fuel-Cell Vehicle

— Striving to Realize a CO2-free Society by Combining FCV with an external power feeding device and Smart Hydrogen Station —

TOKYO, Japan, November 17, 2014 — Honda Motor Co., Ltd. today unveiled, for the first time in the world, the Honda FCV CONCEPT, a concept car for an all-new fuel-cell vehicle (FCV), and the Honda Power Exporter CONCEPT, a concept model for an external power feeding device that enables AC power output from the FCV with maximum output of 9 kW*1. The all-new FCV that will be based on this concept model is scheduled to go on sale in Japan by the end of March, 2016 and subsequently in the U.S. and Europe. In addition to the FCV and external power feeding device, Honda will further promote the application of the Smart Hydrogen Station (SHS), a packaged hydrogen station unit that adopts Honda’s original high-differential-pressure electrolyzer. In this way, Honda will work toward the forthcoming hydrogen society under three key concepts – «generate,» «use» and «get connected» – and strive for the early realization of a CO2-free society.

Honda FCV CONCEPT

Honda Power Exporter CONCEPT
Honda views hydrogen as a high-potential, next-generation energy carrier due to the fact that hydrogen can be generated from various energy sources and is easily transportable and storable. Based on this view, Honda has been positioning the FCV -which uses electricity generated through the chemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen as a power source for the motor – as the ultimate environmentally responsible vehicle and taking a proactive approach to the research and development of FCVs since the late 1980s.

In 2002, the Honda FCX became the first*2 fuel cell vehicle in the world to be certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB). With these certifications, Honda began lease sales of the Honda FCX in Japan and the U.S. In 2003, Honda developed the Honda FC STACK, the world’s first*2 fuel-cell stack able to start at below-freezing temperatures. Then in 2005, Honda became the world’s first*2 to begin lease sales of FCVs to individual customers in the U.S.

In 2008, Honda began lease sales of the FCX Clarity, an unprecedented fuel-cell vehicle that offers not only the ultimate in clean performance, but also new values and the appeal of a car, including an innovative sedan-type package and driving feel that is far beyond conventional vehicles.

As demonstrated by this track record to date, Honda has been a leading company in the field of FCV development, amassing real-world data through lease sales in Japan and the U.S., including actual feedback from individual users and also driving data from the vehicles.

The Honda FCV CONCEPT is a concept car for Honda’s next-generation FCV, a successor model to the FCX Clarity, with which Honda strives to achieve a further improvement in performance and a reduction in cost. The newly-developed fuel-cell stack installed to this concept car is 33% smaller than the previous fuel-cell stack and yet realized output of more than 100 kW and output density as high as 3.1 kW/L, improving the overall performance by approximately 60% compared to the previous version of the fuel-cell stack. Honda’s next-generation FCV will be the world’s first*2 FCV sedan with the entire powertrain, including the downsized fuel-cell stack, consolidated under the hood of a sedan-type vehicle. This powertrain layout enables a full cabin package that seats five adults comfortably and also will make it possible to evolve this vehicle into multiple models in the future when the more widespread use of FCVs requires enhanced choices for customers.

The Honda FCV CONCEPT is also equipped with a 70 MPa high-pressure hydrogen storage tank that provides a cruising range of more than 700 km*3. The tank can be refilled in approximately three minutes*4, making refueling as quick and easy as today’s gasoline vehicles.

Furthermore, the Honda FCV CONCEPT features an external power feeding function*5, which underwent a large number of verification tests with the FCX Clarity. When combined with an external power feeding device, this FCV can function as a small-sized mobile power plant that generates and provides electricity to the community in times of disaster or other events.

Striving to make a contribution to the forthcoming «hydrogen energy society,» Honda will continue taking on new challenges in the area of hydrogen technologies including the Smart Hydrogen Station, FCVs and external power feeding devices.

In addition, graphene membranes could be used to sieve hydrogen gas out of the atmosphere, where it is present in minute quantities, creating the possibility of electric generators powered by air.

One-atom thick material graphene, first isolated and explored in 2004 by a team at The University of Manchester, is renowned for its barrier properties, which has a number of uses in applications such as corrosion-proof coatings and impermeable packaging.

For example, it would take the lifetime of the universe for hydrogen, the smallest of all atoms, to pierce a graphene monolayer.

Now a group led by Sir Andre Geim tested whether protons are also repelled by graphene. They fully expected that protons would be blocked, as existing theory predicted as little proton permeation as for hydrogen.

Despite the pessimistic prognosis, the researchers found that protons pass through the ultra-thin crystals surprisingly easily, especially at elevated temperatures and if the films were covered with catalytic nanoparticles such as platinum.

The discovery makes monolayers of graphene, and its sister material boron nitride, attractive for possible uses as proton-conducting membranes, which are at the heart of modern fuel cell technology. Fuel cells use oxygen and hydrogen as a fuel and convert the input chemical energy directly into electricity. Without membranes that allow an exclusive flow of protons but prevent other species to pass through, this technology would not exist.

Despite being well-established, fuel-cell technology requires further improvements to make it more widely used. One of the major problems is a fuel crossover through the existing proton membranes, which reduces their efficiency and durability.

The University of Manchester research suggests that the use of graphene or monolayer boron nitride can allow the existing membranes to become thinner and more efficient, with less fuel crossover and poisoning. This can boost competitiveness of fuel cells.

The Manchester group also demonstrated that their one-atom-thick membranes can be used to extract hydrogen from a humid atmosphere. They hypothesise that such harvesting can be combined together with fuel cells to create a mobile electric generator that is fuelled simply by hydrogen present in air.

Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo, a PhD student and corresponding author of this paper, said: «When you know how it should work, it is a very simple setup. You put a hydrogen-containing gas on one side, apply small electric current and collect pure hydrogen on the other side. This hydrogen can then be burned in a fuel cell.

«We worked with small membranes, and the achieved flow of hydrogen is of course tiny so far. But this is the initial stage of discovery, and the paper is to make experts aware of the existing prospects. To build up and test hydrogen harvesters will require much further effort.»

Dr Sheng Hu, a postdoctoral researcher and the first author in this work, added: «It looks extremely simple and equally promising. Because graphene can be produced these days in square metre sheets, we hope that it will find its way to commercial fuel cells sooner rather than later.»

Until now, the waste has been collected to burn up on re-entry. What’s more, like so many other things developed for the space program, the process could well turn up on Earth, said Pratap Pullammanappallil, a University of Florida associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering.

«It could be used on campus or around town, or anywhere, to convert waste into fuel,» Pullammanappallil said.

In 2006, NASA began making plans to build an inhabited facility on the moon’s surface between 2019 and 2024. As part of NASA’s moon-base goal, the agency wanted to reduce the weight of spacecraft retuning to Earth. Historically, waste generated during spaceflight would not be used further. NASA stores it in containers until it’s loaded into space cargo vehicles that burn as they pass back through Earth’s atmosphere. For future long-term missions, though, it would be impractical to bring all the stored waste back to Earth.

Dumping it on the moon’s surface is not an option, so the space agency entered into an agreement with UF for ideas. Pullammanappallil and then-graduate student Abhishek Dhoble accepted the challenge.

«We were trying to find out how much methane can be produced from uneaten food, food packaging and human waste,» said Pullammanappallil, a UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences faculty member and Dhoble’s adviser. «The idea was to see whether we could make enough fuel to launch rockets and not carry all the fuel and its weight from Earth for the return journey. Methane can be used to fuel the rockets. Enough methane can be produced to come back from the moon.»

NASA started by supplying the UF scientists with a packaged form of chemically produced human waste that also included simulated food waste and packaging materials, Pullammanappallil said. He and Dhoble, now a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, ran laboratory tests to find out how much methane could be produced from the waste and how quickly.

They found the process could produce 290 liters of methane per crew per day, all produced in a week, Pullammanappallil said.

Their results led to the creation of a process that uses an anaerobic digester. That process kills pathogens from human waste, and produces biogas — a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide.

In earth-bound applications, that fuel could be used for heating, electricity generation or transportation.

Additionally, the digester process breaks down organic matter from human waste. The process also would produce about 200 gallons of non-potable water annually from all the waste. That is water held within the organic matter, which is released as organic matter decomposes. Through electrolysis, the water can then be split into hydrogen and oxygen, and the astronauts can breathe oxygen as a back-up system. The exhaled carbon dioxide and hydrogen can be converted to methane and water in the process, he said. The study was published last month in the journal Advances in Space Research.

The findings will be described today in a talk at the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) meeting in San Francisco, Calif.

Fluid dynamicists Kambiz Salari and Jason Ortega ran aerodynamic tests on a detailed 1/8 scale model of a semi-truck in the wind tunnel facilities at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California. The truck was tested in various configurations. In some, it was outfitted with trailer skirts, which are panels affixed along the lower side edges of a trailer that reduce drag resulting from airflow interacting with wheels and other structures under the body of the trailer; in others, a boat tail fairing, a device affixed to the back of the trailer that decreases drag by reducing the trailer wake size, was added. In still other tests, the truck was rigged with both of the drag-reducing devices (or with neither one).

Salari and Ortega found that adding both of the devices — which are currently used in combination on about three to four percent of the nation’s semi-trucks — reduced the aerodynamic drag by as much as 25 percent, which represents about a 13 percent decrease in fuel consumption. «Even a minor improvement in a truck’s fuel economy has a significant impact on its yearly fuel consumption,» Salari said. «For example, 19 percent improvement in fuel economy, which we can achieve, translates to 6.5 billion gallons of diesel fuel saved per year and 66 million fewer tons of carbon dioxide emission into the atmosphere. For diesel fuel costing $3.96 per gallon, the savings is about $26 billion.»

«We are in the process of designing from the ground-up the shape of the next-generation of highly aerodynamic and integrated heavy vehicles to radically decrease aerodynamic drag and improve the fuel efficiency,» Salari said.

When associate professor Qi Hua Fan of the South Dakota State University electrical engineering and computer science department set out to make a less expensive supercapacitor for storing renewable energy, he developed a new plasma technology that will streamline the production of display screens.

For his work on thin film and plasma technologies, Fan was named researcher of the year for the Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering. His research at the Center for Advanced Photovoltaics focuses on nanostructured materials used for photovoltaics, energy storage and displays.

Making electrodes for supercapacitors

Last spring Fan received a proof-of-concept grant from the Department of Energy through the North Central Regional Sun Grant Center to determine if biochar, a byproduct of the a process that converts plants materials into biofuel, could be used in place of expensive activated carbon to make electrodes for supercapacitors

Sun Grant promotes collaboration among researchers from land-grant institutions, government agencies and the private sector to develop and commercialize renewable, bio-based energy technologies. The proof-of-concept grants allow researchers to advance promising research to the next level of toward product development and commercialization.

«The amount of charge stored in a capacitor depends on the surface area,» Fan explained, «and the biochar nanoparticles can create an extremely large surface area which can then hold more charge.»

He deposits the biochar on a substrate using a patent-pending electrochemical process he developed and licensed to Applied Nanofilms LLC, in Brookings, South Dakota. Applied Nanofilms and Wintek, a company that makes flat panel displays for notebooks and touch screens in Ann Arbor, Michigan, provided matching funds.

Through this project, Fan developed a faster way of treating the biochar particles using a new technology called plasma activation. «Treating means you use plasma to change the material surface, such as creating pores,» Fan said.

The plasma treatment activates the biochar in five minutes and at room temperature, Fan explained. Conventional chemical activation takes several hours to complete and must be done at high temperatures — approximately 1,760 degrees Fahrenheit.

«This saves energy and is much more efficient,» Fan said. In this project, he has been collaborating with assistant professor Zhengrong Gu in the agricultural and biosystems engineering department, whose research focuses on energy storage materials and devices. They plan to use these promising results to apply for federal funding.

Applying plasma process to displays

The technique that treats biochar electrodes for supercapacitors can also be used in making displays, explained Fan, who was a research scientist at Wintek more than 10 years ago. Since last fall, Fan has been collaborating with Wintek on ways of producing more efficient, better performing materials, such as silicon and carbon thin films, for the company’s displays.

«Plasma processing is a very critical technology in modern optoelectronic materials and devices,» Fan explained. The high-energy plasma can deposit highly transparent and conductive thin films, create high quality semiconductors, and pattern micro- or nano-scale devices, thus making the display images brighter and clearer.

Fan will work with Wintek to develop a prototype plasma system. The activation method has the potential to improve production efficiency, saving time and energy, he noted.

A report published today shows how electrons hop across otherwise electrically insulating areas of bacterial proteins, and that the rate of electrical transfer is dependent on the orientation and proximity of electrically conductive ‘stepping stones’.

It is hoped that this natural process can be used to improve ‘bio batteries’ which could produce energy for portable technology such as mobile phones, tablets and laptops — powered by human or animal waste.

Many micro-organisms can, unlike humans, survive without oxygen. Some bacteria survive by ‘breathing rocks’ — especially minerals of iron. They derive their energy from the combustion of fuel molecules that have been taken into the cell’s interior.

A side product of this reaction is a flow of electricity that can be directed across the bacterial outer membrane and delivered to rocks in the natural environment — or to graphite electrodes in fuel cells.

This means that the bacteria can release electrical charge from inside the cell into the mineral, much like the neutral wire in a household plug.

The research team looked at proteins called ‘multi-haem cytochromes’ contained in ‘rock breathing’ bacteria such as species of Shewanella.

Lead researcher Prof Julea Butt, from UEA’s School of Chemistry and School of Biological Sciences said: «These bacteria can generate electricity in the right environment.

«We wanted to know more about how the bacterial cells transfer electrical charge — and particularly how they move electrons from the inside to the outside of a cell over distances of up to tens of nanometres.

«Proteins conduct electricity by positioning metal centres — known as haems — to act in a similar way to stepping stones by allowing electrons to hop through an otherwise electrically insulating structure. This research shows that these centres should be considered as discs that the electrons hop across.

«The relative orientation of neighbouring centres, in addition to their proximity, affects the rates that electrons move through the proteins.

«This is an exciting advance in our understanding of how some bacterial species move electrons from the inside to the outside of a cell and helps us understand their behaviour as robust electron transfer modules.

«We hope that understanding how this natural process works will inspire the design of bespoke proteins which will underpin microbial fuel cells for sustainable energy production.»

The research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and performed in collaboration with researchers at University College London, UK and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA.

‘Multi-haem cytochromes in Shewanella oneidensis MR-1: structures, functions and opportunities’ is published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface on November 19, 2014.

The Rice lab of materials scientist Jun Lou created the new cathode, one of the two electrodes in batteries, from nanotubes that are seamlessly bonded to graphene and replaces the expensive and brittle platinum-based materials often used in earlier versions.

The discovery was reported online in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Journal of Materials Chemistry A.

Dye-sensitized solar cells have been in development since 1988 and have been the subject of countless high school chemistry class experiments. They employ cheap organic dyes, drawn from the likes of raspberries, which cover conductive titanium dioxide particles. The dyes absorb photons and produce electrons that flow out of the cell for use; a return line completes the circuit to the cathode that combines with an iodine-based electrolyte to refresh the dye.

While they are not nearly as efficient as silicon-based solar cells in collecting sunlight and transforming it into electricity, dye-sensitized solar cells have advantages for many applications, according to co-lead author Pei Dong, a postdoctoral researcher in Lou’s lab.

«The first is that they’re low-cost, because they can be fabricated in a normal area,» Dong said. «There’s no need for a clean room. They’re semi-transparent, so they can be applied to glass, and they can be used in dim light; they will even work on a cloudy day.

«Or indoors,» Lou said. «One company commercializing dye-sensitized cells is embedding them in computer keyboards and mice so you never have to install batteries. Normal room light is sufficient to keep them alive.»

The breakthrough extends a stream of nanotechnology research at Rice that began with chemist Robert Hauge’s 2009 invention of a «flying carpet» technique to grow very long bundles of aligned carbon nanotubes. In his process, the nanotubes remained attached to the surface substrate but pushed the catalyst up as they grew.

The graphene/nanotube hybrid came along two years ago. Dubbed «James’ bond» in honor of its inventor, Rice chemist James Tour, the hybrid features a seamless transition from graphene to nanotube. The graphene base is grown via chemical vapor deposition and a catalyst is arranged in a pattern on top. When heated again, carbon atoms in an aerosol feedstock attach themselves to the graphene at the catalyst, which lifts off and allows the new nanotubes to grow. When the nanotubes stop growing, the remaining catalyst (the «carpet») acts as a cap and keeps the nanotubes from tangling.

The hybrid material solves two issues that have held back commercial application of dye-sensitized solar cells, Lou said. First, the graphene and nanotubes are grown directly onto the nickel substrate that serves as an electrode, eliminating adhesion issues that plagued the transfer of platinum catalysts to common electrodes like transparent conducting oxide.

Second, the hybrid also has less contact resistance with the electrolyte, allowing electrons to flow more freely. The new cathode’s charge-transfer resistance, which determines how well electrons cross from the electrode to the electrolyte, was found to be 20 times smaller than for platinum-based cathodes, Lou said.

The key appears to be the hybrid’s huge surface area, estimated at more than 2,000 square meters per gram. With no interruption in the atomic bonds between nanotubes and graphene, the material’s entire area, inside and out, becomes one large surface. This gives the electrolyte plenty of opportunity to make contact and provides a highly conductive path for electrons.

Lou’s lab built and tested solar cells with nanotube forests of varying lengths. The shortest, which measured between 20-25 microns, were grown in 4 minutes. Other nanotube samples were grown for an hour and measured about 100-150 microns. When combined with an iodide salt-based electrolyte and an anode of flexible indium tin oxide, titanium dioxide and light-capturing organic dye particles, the largest cells were only 350 microns thick — the equivalent of about two sheets of paper — and could be flexed easily and repeatedly.

Tests found that solar cells made from the longest nanotubes produced the best results and topped out at nearly 18 milliamps of current per square centimeter, compared with nearly 14 milliamps for platinum-based control cells. The new dye-sensitized solar cells were as much as 20 percent better at converting sunlight into power, with an efficiency of up to 8.2 percent, compared with 6.8 for the platinum-based cells.

Based on recent work on flexible, graphene-based anode materials by the Lou and Tour labs and synthesized high-performance dyes by other researchers, Lou expects dye-sensitized cells to find many uses. «We’re demonstrating all these carbon nanostructures can be used in real applications,» he said.

Yu Zhu, a Rice alumnus and now an assistant professor at the University of Akron, Ohio, is co-lead author of the paper. Co-authors include postdoctoral researcher Jingjie Wu and graduate students Jing Zhang and Sidong Lei, all of Rice; and Feng Hao, a postdoctoral researcher, and Professor Hong Lin of Tsinghua University, China. Tour is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of materials science and nanoengineering and of computer science. Hauge is a distinguished faculty fellow in chemistry and in materials science and nanoengineering with the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology. Lou is an associate professor and associate chair of the Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering.

The research was supported by the Welch Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and its Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI), the Department of Energy, the Lockheed Martin LANCER IV program, Sandia National Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research MURI.