High energy conversion rate and low noise Modern fuel cell technology

Recently, Hyundai Motor officially announced its fuel cell technology at the Paris Motor Show and released the ix35 Fuel Cell model that uses fuel cells. Let's take a look at this relatively rare technology.

What is Fuel Cell

Fuel Cell literally means that fuel and oxidant are chemically reacted to directly convert into electrical energy, but it cannot store electricity, it can only generate electricity. The difference between fuel cells and conventional batteries is that fuel cells need to continuously input fuel and oxidant into the battery when working. As long as the supply is continuous, the fuel cell will continue to provide electricity.

Advantages of fuel cells

Fuel cells have two obvious advantages. First, they have high energy conversion efficiency. Fuel cells directly convert the chemical energy of fuel into electrical energy without going through the combustion process. Another advantage is that harmful gas emissions and noise are relatively low.

Now that we know what a fuel cell is, let's look at the chassis of Hyundai's ix35 Fuel Cell model. We can divide it into three parts, namely the drive part, the energy storage part, and the hydrogen storage tank. They correspond to the red, green, and yellow parts in the figure below.

● Driving part

The driving part is located at the front of the car, which is the engine compartment of the traditional gasoline engine model. The ix35 Fuel Cell is a fuel cell model. The hydrogen-oxygen primary cell reaction occurs in the fuel cell reaction chamber. The chemical energy of the fuel is directly converted into electrical energy, thereby providing power for the electric motor to drive the vehicle forward. The product of the reaction is only water, which is another advantage of this fuel cell model.

● Energy storage

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, one of the disadvantages of fuel cells is that they can only generate electricity but cannot store energy. The ix35 Fuel Cell is equipped with a bidirectional high-voltage DC converter and a battery. The energy recovery system recovers the excess energy released by the fuel cell during vehicle braking, coasting and low-load conditions and stores it in the battery, providing additional energy for vehicle driving and electrical equipment, extending the driving range.

● Hydrogen storage tank

The ix35 Fuel Cell's hydrogen storage tank is located at the rear of the vehicle. There are two hydrogen storage tanks of different sizes, which can store a total of 5.64kg of liquid hydrogen. In addition, the vehicle can be filled with liquid hydrogen through the liquid hydrogen filling port, and the filling time is about a few minutes.

Summarize:

At the Paris Motor Show, Hyundai announced that it would mass-produce the ix35 Fuel Cell model and provide private rental services. However, this time we missed it again. The ix35 Fuel Cell model and private rental services are only available in Europe. Since the "fuel" it uses is liquid hydrogen, the practicality of this type of vehicle is directly restricted by the number of hydrogen refueling stations. Although fuel cell technology is becoming more and more mature, it is still too far away to talk about the "popularization" of "fuel cell vehicles" before hydrogen refueling stations can be as common as gas stations.