A Solution for the American Auto Industry

President Barack Obama took steps to re-invent General Motors and Chrysler for the better, hopefully. The current focus is on survival. Unaddressed was how to regain American leadership in the automobile industry.

President Obama earlier this month visited the Edison Electric Vehicle Center located in Pomona, California, where he spoke glowingly of this option and mentioned the availability of large development funds. His stimulus plan, he said, provides $2.4 billion to help Detroit make the transition to hybrid cars. He also talked about a $2 billion battery R&D program to compete with the world, which could well be the same program.

A year ago I would have rejoiced at his dedication to EVs. Today, I'm not quite so sure. I've written two posts on this related subject, comparing plug-ins with the fuel cell and suggesting that we develop our own technology for powering cars.

The vaunted GM plug-in Volt, for example, will sell beginning in 2010 for $40,000. As an intermediate step, I guess this is the best they can do, but this is no way to reassert American dominance in the field, for the Volt will use a lithium battery from South Korea. Why? It appears that countries from Europe and the Orient have a lock on workable next generation battery patents for lithium. The sad conclusion is that we have no future in battery powered vehicles.

The announced American battery consortium of 14 companies with the Argonne National Laboratory (note, particularly, the absence of GM, Ford and Chrysler) is seeking billions to advance our cause. Their announced focus will be on lithium, so one immediately can speculate that all they will be able to do will be to streamline the marketing and importation of these batteries. Why don't they, instead, produce a better battery, you say? Well, it turns out that battery technology has reached the end of the line. There is no future material on the horizon, save for maybe some mysterious super capacitor or blue-sky nanotech pathway.

Why then don't we use some American ingenuity to develop a superior way for moving vehicles? Immediately scratch the ICE and lead acid batteries. Heartbreak, but eliminate the nickel hydride battery, an invention of American Stanford Ovshinsky of Detroit. His travails with GM deserve a tragic re-write by the next Shakespeare. Also delete the lithium battery, for we missed the boat here. What else is there?

There is a technology that was invented 170 years ago in Wales. It is called a fuel cell and is used on NASA journeys to produce electricity and freshwater for drinking. Being readied for commercialization is the micro fuel cell to run your iPod and portable computer. For the same space as a lithium battery, this device can operate five times longer. The fuel is methanol.

Methanol is the simplest alcohol and can be directly fed into a fuel cell without reforming, a very expensive process. Now this is difficult to believe, but one gallon of methanol has 1.4 times more accessible hydrogen than one gallon of liquid hydrogen.

Today, methanol is produced through the steam reforming of natural gas, but in the future, biomass can be gasified and catalyzed into biomethanol. This is a natural for the farm industry, for all the non-edible portion of any crop can be collected for processing into methanol.

Why then don't we do this already? Well, it turns out that the Farm Lobby a decade ago came up with what then was a brilliant idea. Why don't we ferment corn into ethanol, which can be used to reduce oil imports. Then, the price of corn will rise and farmers will be more successful. But prohibit methanol, for it is too cheap and will affect the marketing of ethanol. The ploy worked!

Now that people are beginning to wise up to using food for fuel, as the laws are already in place, the Farm Lobby is turning to cellulosic ethanol. While this is technically possible, it will be an economic disaster. If you have any relatively dry biomass, it is much cheaper to produce methanol. As this methanol is the perfect fuel for the direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) to power cars, what a match made in heaven between the heartlands of American and Detroit.

But we have a problem. There is no DMFC for cars. Our Department of Energy has purposefully banned any methanol R&D. Details on parameters such as politics, safety, energy density, etc., can be found in Simple Solutionts for Planet Earth, one of the book icons in the box on the right.

This is then the golden opportunity for our new administration seeking change. As other countries usually watch what we're doing, they also have not done much in this area. The Japanese are on the cusp of commercializing the DMFC for portable applications, but a device for vehicles is a decade away.

Rather than spending billions on a next generation battery to nowhere, we have a once in a lifetime chance to take a leadership role in the solution to Peak Oil, Global Warming and Economic Development. We need a Marshall (but call it Obama) Plan for Detroit to develop the Direct Methanol Fuel Cell for vehicles. In time, we will be able to export products, instead of burying ourselves further by quickly converting to plug-in vehicles where the batteries will need to be imported.

Comments

[RobinSeattle]

Great article Patrick.

But how about we start thinking of other transportation paradigms? The automobile has been around for a hundred years and can, in a sense, be considered a legacy technology. We need transportation innovation beyond what we have now. Maybe what we need is a prize for transportation innovation that will be open to every American, not just the usual corporate suspects who tend to view real change suspiciously.

The ideal would be a system where we can reduce the infrastructure necessary to service the transportation medium. All electric or fuel cell cars guarantee is the necessity of more roads as our population grows. We can't do that forever.

[Patrick Takahashi - Huffpost Blogger]

I certainly agree with you that some combination of mass transit and better planned cities should be of high priority. The reality is that we will be stuck with cars for many, many decades, and, under this transport mode, the direct methanol fuel cell has more to offer than plug-in electric cars and ethanol burned in internal combustion engines.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

One more time.
Hydrogen has an EROI of about 0.5 which means it's a net LOSER in terms of energy. Once again HYDROGEN IS NOT AN ENERGY SOURCE IT'S AN ENERGY SINK.
We will not get anywhere in energy issues anyway until we get beyond the idea that the only energy problems is HOW DO WE KEEP THE CARS GOING.
I've go a great idea, why don't we build a society where driving a 2 ton vehicle 5 miles to buy a 10oz. pack of chips and a 12 oz soda isn't necessary?

[Patrick Takahashi - Huffpost Blogger]

First, if windpower is used to produce hydrogen, than the EROI is actually higher than gasoline. But you kind of missed the main point. Methanol will be the most efficient biofuel liquid (processes for ethanol will someday be developed, but the efficiency will be quite low) that can be directly processed by a fuel cell. Thus, if one gallon of methanol has 1.4 times more accessible hydrogen than one gallon of liquid hydrogen, why bother making expensive hydrogen?

[MarcelWilliams]

In the long run, I believe that methanol will end up being the dominant fuel for automobiles and methanol derived dimethyl ether will be the dominant fuel for trucks and other heavy vehicles.

Fortunately, a bipartisan group of members in congress has introduced a bill that would require that 80 percent of all new automobile and light trucks sold or manufactured in the U.S. be capable of running on either E85, M85 (a methanol-gasoline blend of 85 percent) or biodiesel.

Also methanol can be introduced into our fuel system through the back door by converting it into gasoline as New Zealand use to do.

Methanol fuel cells still have the problem of terrestrial platinum shortages but alternatives could be found or maybe NASA will finally get around to using the billions of dollars we spend annually on space to mine the asteroids or the moons of Mars for their rich platinum content.

http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/

[Patrick Takahashi - Huffpost Blogger]

I was not aware that Congress is actually seriously considering the M85 option, for the Farm Lobby has effectively eliminated methanol for transport consideration. Do you know, though, if similar tax incentives will also be provided for methanol produced from biomass? Should both of these measures be adopted, cellulosic ethanol (from hydrolysis and fermentation) will never be commercialized, for it is much more cost effective to produce methanol from gasificati­on/catalys­is than ethanol from any process. But, of course, the real advantage will come when the vehicular direct methanol fuel cell is perfected, for the internal combustion engine is not an ideal way to utilize methanol. This is why I am advocating an Apollo-like project for the Direct Methanol Fuel Cell.

[MarcelWilliams]

The Bill is H.R. 1476:
To require automobile manufacturers to ensure that not less that 80 percent of the automobiles manufactured or sold in the United States by each such manufacturer to operate on fuel mixtures containing 85 percent ethanol, 85 percent methanol, or biodiesel.

You can find the entire text starting here:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-1476

There's been a lot of buzz about Carbon Science's CO2 to Fuel concept. They recently filed a patent on a method to produce methanol "A Biocatalytic Process and System to Transform Carbon Dioxide into Methanol,"

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Carbon-Sciences-Inc-951709.html

[jacobomorales]

There seems to be a lot of confusion and different interests competing for attention. You need to go straight to the top.

[Overtone]

A Better Alternative: Future Cars Can Become Power Plants When Parked!

Revolutionary, fuel-free, generators are expected to replace the need to plug-in a plug-in hybrid. One is already on the horizon that could eventually demonstrate a compact, inexpensive, capability to end the need to plug-in. Technological breakthroughs will make possible the elimination of the need for batteries of every variety as well as fuel cells.

Much more powerful examples will later fit in the space of an engine and gas tank. When that occurs, since no fuel or battery recharge is required, automobile manufacturers may conclude that fuel fed engines will become obsolete. The market could decide most future cars must be possible power plants.

Until now, car ownership has been an expense. A few plug-in hybrids, equipped with a two way plug, can feed power to the local utility while parked. The car’s owner could earn up to $4,000 every year.
Payments to car owner’s using fuel free generators might be $15,000 per year.

When vehicles powered by these new types of generators fill a parking garage, it will become a multi-megawatt power plant.

The cost of many vehicles might be paid for by utilities, as they purchase power. The parked cars, trucks and buses, each become decentralized power plants.

This automotive revolution could be led by Detroit.

Last but not least, it will also provide a rapid, cost-effective alternative to constructing new coal burning and nuclear power generation facilities.

[Patrick Takahashi - Huffpost Blogger]

There are some benefits from electric cars serving as a two-way device for the grid. However, wind power is today only 1% of the electricity produced, and coal will continued to be used for another 25 years and more. What about global warming? You might say that, then, we should immediately construct as many nuclear power plants as possible. This will spark a response from Marcel, but in an earlier HuffPo, the information I shared indicated that nuclear facilities might be too expensive to build. Go to:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patrick-takahashi/renewable-electricity-is_b_162435.html.

Anyway, my advocacy of the direct methanol fuel cell is based on the probable fact that the lithium battery will be the last battery (no other material is on the horizon), and all the useful patents are in the hands of Japan, South Korea, China, the European Union and Russia. America can become the first to develop the direct methanol fuel cell for vehicles, which, for the same space in an auto, will take a car five times further than a lithium battery.

[MarcelWilliams]

The problem with the cost of nuclear power plants in the US is that no one knows how much they cost. There have been estimates as high as 16 billion dollars per reactor to as low as 1 billion per reactor. Of course, each 1 GWe reactor generates over 700 million dollars in revenue each year. So over the 60 to 100 year lifetime of the new generation of reactors, each reactor would generate between 42 billion to 70 billion dollars in total revenue-- which is more than enough to pay for the initial capital cost.

The old generation of reactors were pretty much hand-made projects. The new generation of reactors are more standardized systems. But when you discuss the cost of building a new nuclear power plant, you're really talking about the cost of 'first of a kind' projects since these are a new generation reactors. And a new generation of anything is likely to be initially expensive. However, once the first few dozen of the new generation of reactors are built, then the cost will probably decline dramatically due to economies of mass production.

Using the Los Alamos Lab's Green Freedom concept, a 1GWe nuclear reactor could produce 18,000 barrels of day equivalent of gasoline or 5000 tonnes of day of methanol per day. It would require about 1100 nuclear reactors to completely replace petroleum in the US.

Gasoline from Air and Water
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2008/11/gasoline-from-air-and-water_24.html