Mercedes heads up new fuel cell consultancy

Mercedes-Benz has taken the lead role in Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation, a new corporation established as a 'think-tank' working on fuel cell technology.

Benz and the Ford Motor Company had previously worked jointly on fuel cell development with Ballard Power Systems. Ballard, a Canadian company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, will refocus its attention on stationary fuel cell applications, but will remain financially involved with Benz and Ford in the new venture.

The shareholding breakdown comprises Ford with 30 per cent, Benz with 50.1 per cent and Ballard maintaining a financial interest in the new venture with the balance of the shares. Work formerly undertaken by Ballard Power Systems continues under the umbrella of Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation and workers employed by Ballard on automotive fuel cell development are being transferred across to the new business entity.

Dr Andreas Truckenbrodt will head the new company from January next year. Truckenbrodt, who has been in Australia for the Banksia environmental awards, says: "We will take over from Ballard the automotive fuel cell development. What we felt was not because Ballard did a bad job, but the whole fuel cell system design and development has so much to do with the whole vehicle."

In MB's current fuel cell paradigm, a version of the A-Class commuter, the whole fuel cell system -- the electric motor, the cooling system, the fuel cell stack and the storage battery -- is packaged in or under the 'sandwich' floor. Thus Mercedes-Benz, being a car company, has taken over development of a 'car', not a fuel cell stack system.

Mercedes-Benz is no ingénue in fuel cell research. The company has been developing fuel cell vehicles since 1994 and has over a 100 vehicles out on the roads using this type of technology.

Even though the cost of development has been high, Mercedes-Benz persists with fuel cell technology, because it believes fuel cell vehicles offer major efficiency gains over combustion engines. In the words of Truckenbrodt, "I have to say this is the first technology that I've ever worked on that performs better in real life than in the labs."

MB is about to enter its second generation of fuel cell vehicles and there's a foreseeable third generation beyond that.

The first generation from 1994 started with an MB100 van which was overrun with fuel cell technology.

"The first generation is really a technology demonstrator, so what we could demonstrate is that [in] a car as small as an A-Class we could fit fuel cell technology. You may have seen the first fuel cell vehicle that was seen as early as 1994, the 'NeCar One'. That was an MB100 van. The whole cargo bay was filled with fuel cell technology", says Truckenbrodt.

The three generations are respectively, proof of concept, reliability, cost reduction, he explained.

"The second generation which we will get out there in 2010 is a further step; we are still in this sandwich floor concept with B-Class.

"[In the third generation] If we don't manage to get the cost down where the other technologies are, then it won't work, because why would 'we' buy it, if it's not...affordable.

One of the principal challenges in the third generation will be the reduction of precious metals in the fuel cell stack. Truckenbrodt says Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation will concentrate on either reducing the platinum content for the fuel cell stack membrane or find some cheaper alternative as the catalyst.

A secondary issue for the industry concerns the resupply of hydrogen to replenish fuel cell cars; what Truckenbrodt describes as "this chicken and egg issue."

Oil companies won't create the infrastructure for vehicles dependent on hydrogen for fuel (including combustion engined-cars such as Mazda's RX-8 and BMW 7 Series, more here), while they can't see the market for the fuel and the car companies won't develop hydrogen cars if there's no resupply infrastructure in place.

On top of that, there's the whole vexed question of how one creates hydrogen without using more power than the hydrogen itself yields, doing so without adding to the global CO2 emissions and/or using more non-renewable resources in the process.

Truckenbrodt sees hydrogen coming from various sources.

"You have hydrogen as waste products from chemical industry. You can use all the regenerative energy… Like solar, wind, water, nuclear.

“You can [also] do it from natural gas by reforming. In this case, what you would do there, is to put a reforming station into the filling station, to produce the hydrogen on site. There could be refilling stations which you could have in your home."

Contrary to everyone's remembrance of the Hindenburg disaster, one of the advantages in hydrogen is that unlike petrol, it's a much lighter fluid and is actually safer once it combusts than petrol is.

Truckenbrodt has a video on his computer, comparing the combustion of hydrogen versus petrol. The hydrogen combustion is spectacular but over in a matter of seconds, whereas the "gasoline was burning and burning and burning..."

In an industrial accident at Ballard while Truckenbrodt was working there, a truck driver almost immolated himself in a hydrogen explosion. Amazingly, after a trip to the hospital, he was back at work an hour later.

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