12th INTERNATIONAL EXERGY, ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT SYMPOSIUM (IEEES-12), DOHA, Qatar, 20 Aralık 2020
Both academic and industrial R&D motivation for fuel cell
electric vehicles (FCEV) has lagged behind the immense momentum increase for
battery electric vehicles (BEV) in last decades. Even though there are quite
important challenges that need to be addresses for both technologies, the
problems with BEV technology can be tackled relatively easier. This study aimed
to review current important challenges for FCEV technology which can be
summarized under at least 4 different categories such as 1) Hydrogen
production: Even though the byproducts of the reaction takes place in FCEVs are
just water and electricity, the hydrogen production from natural gas or other
hydrocarbons is not cost-effective and environmetally friendly as it is
thought. Global daily consumption of hydrogen, mostly by oil refineries and
chemical industry, is about 70 million tonnes and significantly associated with
CO2 emissions. 2) Storage and distribution: Hydrogen storage is
still regarded as problematic due to several reasons including liquefication of
hydrogen at high pressures, safety measures for compressed hydrogen storage
tanks, leakage/storage challenges, gravimetric and volumetric inefficiency etc.
Due to paradigm shift to autonomous driving which enables passengers move freely
inside vehicles, the energy storage should be located at the bottom of vehicles
in flat form. Therefore, current cylindrical type IV pressure vessels are
needed to be replaced with rectangular shaped ones. 3) Distribution:
Transportation of hydrogen in mass scale is quite expensive and it also
requires relatively complicated infrastructure for refueling FCEVs. 4) Economy:
Compared to BEV, FCEV infrastructure is more expensive. A scenario analysis
showed that FCEV would be more economical over BEV if a fleet size of one
million cars are on the road. On the other hand, durability and degradation
issues of stack components should be addressed. Despite these challenges FCEV
shows slow but consistently increasing trend.