Looking Beyond the Internal Combustion Engine: The Promise of Methanol Fuel Cell Vehicles

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Executive Summary of The Promise of Methanol Fuel Cell Vehicles

Each of the first eight months of 1998 set new record highs for global temperatures. When you consider that every gallon of gasoline burned in an automobile produces 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, it is easy to see why the transportation sector of the economy is responsible for one-third of all carbon dioxide emissions. These emissions present a real challenge for the United States to meet its goal under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7% from 1990 levels.

Emissions from 190 million cars, trucks, and buses on the road account for about half of all air pollution - more than 80 percent in major cities. Efforts to diminish the environmental damage of automobile use have, for the past 50 years, initially focused on adding control devices to the internal combustion engine and recently on producing cleaner gasoline. However, these gains are jeopardized by the increasing number of vehicles on the road.

Our reliance on gasoline-fueled automobiles also raises significant energy security concerns. More than one-fourth of the world's oil production is consumed in the U.S., which every hear imports about one-half its oil, at a cost of about $60 billion to the American economy. With the transportation sector almost completely reliant on oil, future availability and possible price shocks are major policy concerns.

Many thoughtful people have concluded that the 100-year reign of the petrol-fueled, internal combustion engine must begin to give way. In its place, we need a clean, advanced-technology vehicle that retains all the performance and consumer convenience of today's automobile while offering an alternative to our dependence on oil. Fortunately, it is now clear that fuel cell vehicles will soon be available to meet this challenge.

Methanol - a liquid fuel made from natural gas or renewable biomass resources - is the leading candidate to provide the hydrogen necessary to power fuel cell vehicles. The commercialization of methanol-powered fuel cells will offer practical, affordable, long-range electrically-powered vehicles with zero or near-zero emissions while retaining the convenience of a liquid fuel. By 2004 or sooner, fuel cells operating on methanol will power a variety of cars and buses in the United States and worldwide.

Automakers and component suppliers are spending billions of dollars to develop these advanced technology vehicles. The industry leaders include Daimler-Benz, Toyota, General Motors, Volkswagen, Nissan, Ford, Honda and Volvo. The broad-based industrial commitment to fuel cell vehicles derives from their inherent energy efficiency and low emissions. Today's internal combustion engine converts only 19% of the useful energy in gasoline to turning a car's wheels. Methanol fuel cell vehicles are projected to achieve efficiencies of at least 38%, while bringing smog-precursor emissions close to zero and cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half.

Leading the automotive industry in fuel cell vehicle development is Germany's Daimler-Chrysler. At the 1997 Frankfurt Auto Show, Daimler unveiled the NECAR 3, a compact car running on a 50-kilowatt methanol-powered fuel cell. To ensure the commercialization of fuel cell vehicles Daimler has formed a $700 million global alliance with Canadian fuel cell developer Ballard Power Systems and American automaker Ford Motor Company. DBB Fuel Cell Engines, the alliance's joint venture, plans to complete work on its prototype series car - the NECAR 5 - in late 1999, and intends to build 40,000 methanol-powered fuel cell drive trains in 2004. Daimler believes that with a production volume of 250,000 vehicles per year, the fuel cell vehicle will be cost-competitive with traditional internal combustion cars.

Japanese automaker Toyota also showcased a prototype methanol fuel cell vehicle at the Frankfurt Auto Show. Based on the popular RAV4 sport-utility vehicle and operating on methanol, this prototype car has a range of 500 kilometers, while demonstrating a hybrid design concept quite different from the Daimler prototype. Toyota's fuel cell RAV4 employs a 25-kilowatt fuel cell that works in conjunction with a downsized electric vehicle battery pack that is recharged from the fuel cell.

A parade of other automakers have committed to developing methanol fuel cell vehicles. General Motors announced plans to have a production-ready methanol fuel cell vehicle by at least 2004. Nissan is working with Ballard on a methanol fuel cell vehicle it hopes to begin selling by 2003 to 2005. Volkswagen plans to unveil a functioning prototype vehicle in 2000, in a development effort with Johnson Matthey and Volvo, supported by the European Union.

While Daimler's NEBUS is fueled with compressed hydrogen, for more than 14 years, researchers at Georgetown University have been developing methanol fuel cell buses. In 1994 and 1995, Georgetown rolled out three 30-foot buses that were the world's first fuel cell vehicles capable of operating on liquid fuels. This year, Georgetown is unveiling two methanol-fueled prototype 40-foot transit buses using two different fuel cell technologies. International Fuel Cells has provided Georgetown with a 100-kilowatt phosphoric acid fuel cell, and DBB Fuel Cell Engines is building a 100-kilowatt proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell.

It is projected that the number of vehicles worldwide will increase from 600 million today, to 1 billion by the year 2015. The introduction of large numbers of low-emission, energy-efficient methanol fuel cell vehicles is not only needed but well within reach. Based on announcements from various automakers and the political and regulatory pressure to introduce advanced-technology vehicles, the Methanol Institute (the trade association for the methanol industry in the United States) recently estimated that by the year 2010 automakers will have introduced at least 2 million methanol fuel cell vehicles worldwide. By 2020, the total fleet of methanol fuel cell vehicles on the road may reach or surpass 35 million vehicles.

Earlier versions of the Daimler-Chrysler fuel cell vehicle - the NECAR I and NECAR II - were fueled by gaseous hydrogen stored in bulky high-pressure cylinders, as is Daimler's fuel cell-powered transit bus called the NEBUS. On vehicles, hydrogen can be stored as a cryogenic liquid or as a pressurized gas. Recently, a panel of fuel cell experts reported to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) that, "hydrogen is not considered a technically and economically feasible fuel for private automobiles now or in the foreseeable future." The panel found that fueling infrastructure problems and the storage of an extremely cold liquefied fuel or highly compressed gas on board a vehicle would not be "practical." The panel concluded that fuel cell vehicles must get their hydrogen through the on-board processing of a hydrogen-rich fuel.

Methanol emerges as the ideal hydrogen carrier for vehicles because it is liquid at room temperature and ambient pressure. Methanol is a simple molecule consisting of a single carbon atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms and one oxygen-hydrogen group. Releasing the hydrogen from its bonds in a methanol molecule is easier to accomplish than for other available liquid fuels. Moreover, methanol fuel contains no sulfur, which is a fuel-cell contaminant, has no carbon-to-carbon bonds, which are hard to break, and has a very high hydrogen-to-carbon ratio. Methanol fuel cell vehicles use a steam reformer operating at relatively low temperatures to split the methanol molecule and produce the hydrogen needed by the fuel cell stack.

Gasoline is also being considered as a hydrogen source for fuel cell vehicles, however this technology has yet to overcome some significant obstacles. Today's gasoline has several components that make it more difficult to reform into a hydrogen stream. It is likely that a light fraction of straight chain hydrocarbons with little or no sulfur will be desired for fuel cell vehicles. This specially formulated fuel would require separate distribution and storage at the retail station. On the vehicle, the gasoline reformer will operate at a higher temperature than a methanol reformer, yield a lower concentration of hydrogen, and produce more carbon monoxide that adversely impacts fuel cell performance.

Another fuel cell technology is on the horizon: the direct methanol fuel cell. This technology is expected to reach commercial maturity as early as 2008, just a few short years after the introduction of the steam reformer methanol fuel cell vehicles. Methanol is injected directly into the cell in a direct methanol fuel cell removing the need for a reformer and its associated controls, thereby reducing weight and cost, and eliminating the small amount of nitrogen oxide emissions produced in steam reforming.

Given the strong commitment to developing methanol fuel cell vehicles, we must begin to address the need for fueling infrastructure to serve these vehicles. The largest network of methanol fueling stations is in California, where 100 public and private stations serve 15,000 methanol-powered alternative fuel vehicles. Given California's experience in building methanol fueling stations, we can estimate that the cost to add methanol fueling capability to an existing gasoline station is about $50,000. While consumers have come to expect near universal availability of fuel for their automobiles, the most likely methanol fuel distribution development scenario does not rely on creating a complete system overnight. Rather, it will build upon the existing gasoline distribution system as the methanol fuel cell vehicle fleet grows.

Fuel cell vehicle introduction will focus initially on the three U.S. states requiring the sale of Zero-Emission Vehicles by 2003 (California, New York and Massachusetts), as well as Germany and Japan. These highly populated areas are strong candidates for early adoption because they tend to have higher levels of pollution and offer maximum scale efficiencies for the first wave of methanol fuel infrastructure. It would cost less than $500 million to convert 10% of the stations in these target areas to methanol operation. Assuming that methanol retail stations are required to cover all of North America, Europe and Japan, the cost would still only approach $1.9 billion for 10% of the stations and $4.7 billion for 25% of the stations.

The introduction of a methanol fueling infrastructure will also prove to be a major advance for the protection of water quality on land and in the ocean. Methanol is easily biodegradable in aerobic and anaerobic environments. In fact, methanol is used to facilitate the breakdown of municipal sewage as part of the treatment process before discharge into sensitive oceans and rivers. No one would argue that the accidental release of methanol into the environment would be a good thing, but a leak of methanol from an underground storage tank would have a less adverse impact than a gasoline leak.

In 1998, worldwide methanol production capacity stood at about 11.4 billion gallons (34 million tons). The methanol industry has a significant impact on the global economy, generating over $12 billion in annual economic activity while creating over 100,000 jobs. Given the above estimates of vehicle market penetration, we can make several assumptions about the demand for methanol fuel. By 2010, automakers will have introduced 2 million fuel cell vehicles, each using 441 gallons of methanol per year, producing a demand of 882 million gallons of methanol per year, or less than 8 percent of current world capacity. By 2020, our estimated fleet of 35 million vehicles would consume 15.4 billion gallons of methanol - roughly 135% of current world capacity - and would require significant capital investments in new methanol production plants. Because large-scale methanol plants can be built in 2 to 2.5 years, there should be no length time interval to add the necessary capacity.

The vast quantities of natural gas in the world ensure the availability of feedstock to produce the methanol needed for this future fleet. In 1996, reserves stood at 49,912 trillion cubic feet (TCF) with annual consumption of 78 TCF. Producing 15.4 billion gallons of methanol would create a demand for 1.4 TCF of natural gas (less than 2 percent of current annual consumption). With 3.8 TCF of natural gas flared and vented each year, offshore natural gas also offers a tremendous opportunity for methanol production that the United Kingdom's ICI Synetix is working to capture. In 1994, the first 54,000 ton-per-year development plant using Synetix technology started in Australia, built by BHP on land to test the concept for the Floating Production, Storage, and Offloading System (FPSO). BHP expects to go offshore with world-scale plants using this technology early in the next decade. Finally, methanol can be produced from a variety of renewable feedstocks including, woody biomass, municipal solid waste, sewage and even seaweed.

Buoyed by the commitment of the automotive industry to develop methanol fuel cell vehicles, the methanol industry is excited about the prospects for these clean vehicles to create significant new markets for methanol fuels. For less than $2 per person, a state or nation the size of California, with 30 million people, could put methanol fueling pumps into one out of 10 retail stations. Clearly, methanol fuel cell vehicles are one of the great environmental — and energy security — bargains in history.

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