The Global-warming debate has stimulated Society to examine the way we generate, use and conserve energy. The Automobile Industry is under sustained pressure from legislators and the general public to produce vehicles with improved fuel efficiency and next to zero emission. Scientists and Engineers are searching for cleaner ways to power vehicles and I am sure you have read about or even seen some of the clever hybrid designs on the road today.

The knock on effect of this will effect our boating lives as engines in road vehicles get replaced with fuel cells coupled to electric motors, so will our boat engines as most are car or truck based. Emission and noise regulations will encourage us to change to fuel cell and electric drive. For many years I have been enthusiastically following the research into the production of practical fuel cells. The fuel cell, an electrochemical device that converts the chemical energy of a fuel directly to usable energy without combustion, is perhaps the most promising of the technologies evolving today. Running on hydrogen fuel and oxygen from the air, an 85-kilowatt Ballard fuel cell can power a light car without creating undesirable emissions at the tailpipe at a respectable velocity and remarkable economy.

Actually, the fuel cell is not exactly new technology; a barrister Mr W. Grove invented the cell in 1838 so the science has been with us some considerable time. As the 20th century advanced petrol, diesel and even steam advanced very rapidly so fuel cells were just about forgotten. It was the the space race that brought them back to the fore, their low mass and high efficiency made them a realistic alternative to batteries. Who can forget the nail biting drama of the Apollo 13 mission to the moon when a malfunction in a fuel cell caused an explosion and came so close to wrecking the mission out in deep space? (If you are too young or even too old to remember it go and rent the DVD of the film,). The cells aboard Apollo 13 were capable of producing 1.6Wh/kg for a 200-hour mission, the very best batteries at that time could only produce 0.2Wh/kg. As a bonus the ‘waste’ product from the cells was water, rather a useful function on a spacecraft.

After Apollo, work on fuel cells slowly continued but got renewed impetus when the automobile industry realised that conventional batteries could not provide the solution to the zero emission electric vehicle. Vast sums have been invested in research and Ford has started limited production in North America; the Ford P2000 may well be the winner to be the first mass-market vehicle completely powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Close alongside Ford, Daimler Chrysler has plans to market a fuel cell car named the Necar 4. The P2000 has a Ballard Power System proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell. It has a stack of 400 PEM cells, which produces the equivalent of 100bhp, it gives the same performance as a conventional petrol engine of 135bhp, the secret of course is the power to weight ratio. The PEM stack and electric power train is 40% lighter than the conventional unit. The fuel tank is a lightweight composite plug in cassette, which overcomes the problem of re-fuelling with liquid hydrogen.

It is not just space ships and cars moving into fuel cell technology. September 2005 saw Toshiba unveiling its Flash and hard disk based MP3 players with built in methanol powered fuel cells. 3.5 ml of methanol in the 100mW cell generates sufficient current for 35 hours of playback time. Toshiba have also demonstrated laptop and cellphone’s powered by methanol.

Efoy 1600 Portable Fuel Cell

Efoy 1600 with 10L methanol cassette alongside in motor home

You can imagine my enthusiasm when Colin Facey from Woods Dyke Boatyard at Horning in Norfolk mentioned to me he was going to market a portable fuel cell available in three sizes with a charging capacity from 50AH/day to 130AH/day and powered by methanol. The unit he is stocking is made by SFO Smart Fuel Cell AG and sold under the EFOY Energy brand mark. The units are very compact and light at 43.5x20.0x27.6cm and weighing 7.6kg. Colin has fitted one out of sight in his Burstner Motor Home; it is fully automatic and configured to continuously monitor the domestic battery status quo. If the voltage sinks below a pre-programmed level the fuel cell activates charges the battery, and then automatically shuts itself off without user intervention. It is silent in use, makes no smell and 5 litres of methanol lasts for weeks during normal cruising. If you fit a unit to your boat you could fit a small adapter to an RS232 interface and monitor the cell from your laptop or even your mobile phone whilst sitting at home. If you fit the larger output unit the EFOY 1600 and use it to its limit it will give you 1600Wh/day or 130Ah/day and that is a lot of electricity, a whole big battery full! This is state of the art stuff; it does not come cheap but oh boy it is the ultimate in green silent power generation aboard the boat.

Unlike a battery which simply accumulates and stores electrical energy. A fuel cell produces electricity using fairly simple basic chemicals, often just hydrogen and oxygen from the air. The important difference is that fuel cells do not run down like batteries. As long as fuel and oxygen is supplied to the cell it will keep producing electricity theoretically forever. Although the majority of fuel cells use hydrogen as the fuel, methane can be used and a few use liquid fuels such as methanol.

We have had many false dawns in the energy game but we all know deep down that the game is up long term for fossil fuel and that we had better start considering the alternatives. Motor manufacturers do not invest millions in research without being fairly confident of a payback and most of the major players have long term plans for 100% fuel cell powered electric vehicles which offer comparable performance to petrol. Already in Perth, Washington and upstate New York, buses are being introduced, powered with a 180kW fuel cell engine powered with hydrogen stored in tanks on the roof. Similar vehicles can be seen in the streets of Barcelona. The cell takes up the space of a six-cylinder diesel, but at a fraction of the weight. Most motor cruisers have commercial ‘bus’ engines, so other than price there is no reason why we cannot have silent and non-polluting 180 kW fuel cell units. What we need a bit of mass production to get the price down to a realistic level and we join the hydrogen economy. Who needs red diesel then!

Ballard 502 Fuel Cell, will power medium passenger car

Fuel cell powered bus in Perth

Hydrogen is the ultimate green fuel; countries like Iceland and New Zealand with active geo-thermal activity will be able to produce hydrogen by electrolysis. The cost is roughly comparable to shipping fuel in from the middle east but is primary cost the only way to calculate energy costs? The price of fossil fuel will continue to rise especially when supply gets difficult but geothermal should be fairly stable. Also it does not take to much imagination to visualise a small wind turbine in the garden connected up to a few feet of pipe, extracting Hydrogen from water, enabling us effectively to “bottle” the wind to use at the weekend in the engine. The implications of this are quite interesting and the future for transportation is probably nowhere as miserable and bleak, as some pundits would have us believe.