Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Hydrogen Fuel Cells coming closer for Psubs?

[MerlinSub@t-online.de (Carsten Standfuss)]

Ian is right .. thats are the two most biggest problems
in submarine fuel cells..

- very clean hydrogen - or the livetime is limited..
- Hydrogen leakage.. most available system are not 100 %
  hydrogen tight.. no problem in a car.. but in a sub..
  .. maybe a candle can fix that..   

and there is a third one.. 

- heat.. a 1000 watt fuel cell with a efficency of say 
  50 % produce also 1000 watt heat.. 
  if they build something with 75 % you get still 333 watt heat.  

On the other side - a calculation on Euronaut shows that the 
vessels underwater range increase four times with a watercooled
PCM Fuelcell with oxygen and hydrogen in 300 bar gas storage tanks
and removed batteries.. 

Carsten

Ian Roxborough schrieb:
> 
> On Thu, 5 Dec 2002 14:29:54 -0600
> David Buchner <buchner@wcta.net> wrote:
> 
> > Coooool! Can't you get hydrogen cylinders from places that do welding
> > gases? Maybe I imagined that. But it does have to be straight-up
> > hydrogen, not methane or propane (or acetylene?) or other more popular
> > and available fuel, like some ideas I'd heard of. Hm. Like
> > hydrogen-fuelcell cars, that becomes a "they don't sell that around
> > here" type of problem.
> 
> I don't think you cold use anything but hydrogen in this model.
> Finding H2 might be a big problem,  I know the fuel cell's proton
> exchange membrane is sensative to polutants in the hydrogen
> and will loose effiency and finally fail with no way to clean
> the membrane (it's too fragile).  The web page says you need to
> use Fuel Cell grade hydrogen, which is probably very pure, I
> don't know, but I would guess wielding shop hydrogen might not
> be pure enough.
> 
> There is a 'Fuel finder' on the website, the closest to me
> is about 50 miles a way.
> 
> The website also mensions ventilation systems so they may
> be other problems to solve before one could be using in
> a Psub.  I might be pretty dangerous to operate one in the
> same compartment as a person.  Also I've not found out
> how much O2 these things use.
> 
> Ian.