Portal de Cartagena
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Around 167,000 of the 690,000 vehicles of the 45 municipalities of the Region of Murcia could be powered by hydrogen today, with the same cost as conventional cars, according to a study led by Professor of the Polytechnic University of Cartagena Jose Javier Lopez Cascales, Bioinformatics group leader and Macromolecules.
The use of this clean energy in the automotive industry reduce atmospheric emissions of 25,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, even in the worst case scenario, in which the hydrogen was produced by hydrolysis using electricity supplied by the mains Spanish (REE) and the existing energy mix in Spain.
The study entitled, "Environmental impact Associated With The substitution of internal combustion vehicles by fuel cell vehicles refueled With hydrogen generated by electrolysis using the power grid.
An estimation focused on the Autonomous Region of Murcia (Spain) ", which has published the journal Renewable Energy and concludes that this is a viable technology to reduce CO2 emissions associated with the automotive industry solution.
According to the researchers, 25% of current vehicles on the roads in our region may be substituted for hydrogen cars using excess electricity during low-power hour (peak hours), which would save the oil imports 216,000 barrels of oil per day at the national (or 6700 in the Region of Murcia) scale.
However, if the hydro power, ie "gas stations" hydrogen will use renewable energy sources in the process of generating hydrogen (instead of the existing current in our outlets), 25,000 tons of CO2 saved emissions per year, could increase exponentially, and could even supply 100% of the existing fleet.
López Cascales highlights the main advantages of vehicles powered by fuel cells compared to electric cars, are because these cars eliminate the major reluctance to buy an electric car, such as its reduced autonomy (of only a few hundreds of kilometers) and long-time battery recharging.
Faced with these drawbacks, hydrogen powered cars have characteristics similar to those of a standard vehicle features: refueling times of just a few minutes, reduced maintenance, and a range of over 700 kms.
In this sense, says Professor, this is a technology that is advanced in its development process, there actually such prestigious car companies like Toyota and Honda already has models that will be sold soon, with performance (both power and equipment) equivalent to what we can find in a conventional car.
While the cost of hydrogen production using current from the REE is similar to the usual fuel, the environmental implications of the replacement of internal combustion vehicles for fuel cell powered vehicles are remarkable, as is evident in the work.
Finally, researchers have analyzed the real possibilities of change, environmental impact and design of hydro power network that would be needed to implant and develop throughout the Region of Murcia for such vehicles, including a detailed study by municipality.
This study reports the findings of four works Final Master, the Master in Renewable Energies taught at the Polytechnic University of Cartagena, which were led by Professor José Javier López Cascales, and performed by students at master, Juan Mari Carmen Segovia, Jesús Ibáńez Molina, Jose Sanchez and Pedro Vera Moses Vivo.
Currently the research group led by Professor López Cascales is working on the development of the critical parts of fuel cells.
It is also exploring the possibility of patenting one of the critical components of such fuel cells, in which it has managed to reduce its manufacturing cost about 100 times over existing similar products in the market, keeping their technical specifications.
Source: UPCT
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