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Looking forward to their own enterprise: Andreas Schulze Lohoff, Klaus Wedlich, and Vitali Weißbecker (from left to right)
car will no longer weigh 150 kilograms, as is the case when using graphite bipolar plates, but only 50 kilograms. This in turn will make the environmentally friendly car lighter, more efficient, and it will also need to be refuelled with hydrogen less frequently.
Pollutant gases pose a challenge The more fuel cell cars on Germany’s roads in future, the less pollutant gases there will be in the ambient air. Pollutant gases have an adverse effect not only on health but also on fuel cells. The Fuel Cell Research Center (ZBT) in Duisburg, Mann +Hummel, Daimler AG, and Forschungs zentrum Jülich have therefore been investigating which filters in future need to be installed in cars and how fuel cells can maintain their efficiency in spite of contamination from air pollution. For the joint project ALASKA, which is being funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, Jülich atmospheric researchers from IEK in 2015 drove their measuring vehicle roughly 20
Forschungszentrum Jülich Annual Report 2015
times along a 350 kilometre-long route in North Rhine-Westphalia – through tunnels, over side roads, and on busy main roads. They recorded the concentrations of nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide, for example, at roughly three-second intervals. “Although pollutant gases are also measured by environmental stations, these data are mean values measured over 1 hour each. We, however, need to know the short-term peak values, as they are crucial to the contamination of fuel cells for a number of gases,” says Dr. Dieter Klemp from IEK. There are as yet no comprehensive studies on the concentration of pollutants on German
roads that outline both the long-term effects and the peak values. “Over the next few months, we will put into operation a new mobile measuring laboratory that also measures ammonia, a gas that is particularly damaging for fuel cells,” says Klemp’s colleague Dr. Christian Ehlers. The project partners will then be able to dimension their filters and fuel cells in such a manner that they are able to cope well with the adverse effects of pollutants to be expected realistically. This will potentially help the environmentally friendly and energy-efficient technology to achieve a breakthrough.
100
the number of kilograms lighter a car with an 85-kilowatt fuel cell stack will be thanks to the newly discovered carbon compound.
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