Tanking Water To Make Electricity In Your Car? Germans Show it's Possible
If it works at scale it may be the ultimate hybrid solution of the future, marrying the advantages of electric powertrain and hydrogen energy storage, offering great performance and range.
One day, you might be driving on the highway, pulling over at the next station not to plug your car into a supercharger nor pump it with old-fashioned gasoline.
Instead, you might be pouring in what the world has an abundance of: water.
This is how refuelling your vehicle may soon look like thanks to a new product developed in Germany -- a hydrogen “Powerpaste” made with magnesium hydride, which requires water to release hydrogen gas used by the onboard fuel-cell to generate electricity to power the car.
The paste has been developed by Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Applied Materials Research (Franhofer IFAM). It is an applied research organisation co-funded by the German government, performing contract work for industrial clients in development of novel technologies and materials for practical use.
A Hybrid of the Future
If it proves applicable on a large scale, the paste could change the way we think about future mobility.
Today, we’re witnessing gradual development of two competing technologies in vehicle propulsion -- battery-powered electric vehicles, which draw power from the grid to store it in batteries to power the motors driving the car; and fuel-cell vehicles, running on highly compressed hydrogen gas, which is used to generate electricity onboard.
Both have their advantages but are also still suffering due to significant drawbacks.
Electric vehicles (EVs) are simpler to build and use, have fewer moving parts and give great performance. They are, however, still hampered by a considerably shorter range than traditional cars.
They also take a long time to recharge and their batteries are both toxic and get less efficient with time. Widespread adoption of battery-powered cars would also require costly investments in power grid and electricity production to provide access to power wherever the drivers may go.
Hydrogen cars, on the other hand, are quick to refuel, give great range -- just like petrol cars today -- but the necessary infrastructure to transport and store hydrogen is even more complex and costly to develop, as it needs to guarantee necessary safety in handling the gas that becomes explosive at atmospheric pressure.
Powerpaste is a hybrid solution that solves all of these issues.
It has 10 times the storage density of current batteries, while being safe to handle up to 250 degrees Celsius (so, no danger of a fire in a sunny weather) and has no need for pressurised tanks.
The system would require you to either replace a paste-filled cartridge or simply tank the slurry at the station, refill the water tank and off you go for another few hundred miles.
Why Don’t We Have It Yet?
At the moment, Fraunhofer IFMA is developing it as a solution for smaller vehicles like scooters or motorbikes.
The institute also said that it could be used for powering drones, way beyond the limits of conventional batteries (imagine a drone hovering for a few hours instead of 30 to 40 minutes).
However, while the Powerpaste does limit the technological issues, it doesn’t come without its own obstacles.
Setting aside the feasibility of large-scale production, associated energy costs and the price of the final product -- which are yet to be determined -- the technology produces a waste product: magnesium hydroxide.
The substance isn’t toxic and is in fact, used in medicines, primarily to manage heartburn (if you’ve ever had a spoonful of thick white liquid to ease the pain in your stomach, that’s pretty much it). That said, it would obviously have to be collected and recycled back into magnesium hydride.
Secondly, since it relies on tanking liquid water, there’s a question of how the system would work in colder climates during winter time, particularly as water expands upon freezing, which could damage the tank.
It’s also going to be interesting to see what the secret ingredients developed by the Germans are, as the magnesium hydride is not a new compound, and has been investigated as a possible hydrogen storage solution for over 20 years now.
We’ll have to wait for Fraunhofer’s Powerpaste production facility to go online later this year, with a capacity to produce four tons of the "fuel" annually and see real-life applications in vehicles, which is likely to take a few years.
A Much-Needed Breakthrough
If it works, it has the potential to shake up the entire EV industry, development of future batteries, lithium mining and even global geopolitics.
It would be a welcome breakthrough after solid-state batteries, which in recent years have given the greatest promise for the future of EVs but shown to be suffering major headwinds.
Fisker, a carmaker once swearing by solid-state technology, has just announced its complete abandonment.
In the words of its eponymous founder Henrik Fisker: “It’s the kind of technology where when you feel like you’re 90 percent there, you’re almost there; until you realise the last 10 per cent is much more difficult than the first 90. So we have completely dropped solid-state batteries at this point in time because we just don’t see it materialising.”
Solid-state batteries promised much greater energy density and would break with the reliance on lithium, whose mining is currently dominated by just a few countries, including China.
With the technology stalling, the Powerpaste is promising to be a simple and safe fuel, offering 10 times the energy density of conventional batteries.
This would fulfil the solid-state dream in a new form, combining it with all the benefits of hydrogen -- the most abundant element in the universe -- and settle the competition between battery-powered cars and fuel cell vehicles once and for all.