Honey, I shrunk the fuel cell! Next-gen GM hydrogen stack gets small [View All]

[wtmusic]

"In spite of the cuts at General Motors over the past year, work has continued in the powertrain labs at the Warren, MI tech center on hydrogen fuel cells. Back in 2007, GM shifted much of its fuel cell work from the Honeoye Falls, NY research facility to the production engineering group in Warren. The result is the fifth-generation fuel cell stack shown above on the left. The unit on the right is the stack from the fuel cell Equinoxes that are running as part of Project Driveway in California, New York and Washington, DC. The new generation unit matches the 93 kW output of the Equinox unit but occupies the same volume as the 2.4-liter EcoTec four cylinder.

GM has engineered this new stack specifically with the aim of making it producable in volume at a much lower cost than previous designs. That means it gets a cast case with integrated cooling passages and other subsystems. One of the highest cost elements of a fuel cell stack is the platinum used as a catalyst. Read on after the jump.

The fourth-gen stack in the Equinox uses 80 g of platinum while the new stack uses just 30 g. This stack is due for production in volumes of up to 10,000 units a year by the middle of the next decade. In the subsequent iteration, GM plans to have the platinum content down to under 10 g, which would put it on a par with current catalytic converters."

http://green.autoblog.com/2009/08/17/honey-i-shrunk-the-fuel-cell-next-gen-gm-hydrogen-stack-gets-s/

Make no mistake - this inefficient, clumsy, astroturf "green" propulsion system is heavily subsidized by the oil industry. Watch for hydrogen pumps at your nearby service station soon, where you can buy expensive liquid hydrogen which is electrolyzed using - guess what - fossil fuels.