My Chemistry Take-home Midterm Exam - Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars

Will hydrogen fuel cells prove to be the way forward in car designs?

Investigate Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars and report on your findings.

the governors of eight states—California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont—signed a memorandum of understanding committing to having 3.3 million zero-emission vehicles on the roads in their states by 2025.  FCEVs are an important part of this portfolio. But as of now, fueling stations are definitely not widespread, so automakers are not likely to pursue hydrogen unless they see more investments in infrastructure.

Benefits of Hydrogen fuel cells are:

1. electrically powered vehicles reduce the emissions of pollutants that degrade local air quality as well as carbon dioxide emissions, which raise significant worries about altering the climate.

2. Another reason to favor electrically powered vehicles involves national security. Ample supplies of petroleum are found only in select regions of the world. So countries that lack these natural resources will remain at a political and economic disadvantage if they continue to utilize vehicles that burn gasoline or diesel fuel.

3. The final reason stems from the fact that exploitable sources of petroleum are slowly running out. Once the society reaches the point where production cannot keep up with demand, prices will skyrocket. So it’s no wonder, really, that the transition to electric vehicles is speeding up.

Problems with Hydrogen Fuel Cell:

1. If you have a hydrogen fuel cell car, where do you get your hydrogen gas?Fuel cells are expensive to build, Platinum is the dominant material used in the catalyst of these fuel cells (the cathode and anode portion of the fuel stack).

2.Platinum: as expensive, if not more expensive, than gold.The DOE tells me that over time, they've been able to reduce the amount of platinum required in fuel cells: "DOE(DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY)-funded research has reduced automotive fuel cell cost to $53/kW projected at 500,000 units/year and $60/kW at 100,000 units/year. This is more than a 50% cost reduction since 2006. Cost reductions reflect numerous individual advances in key areas, including a five-fold reduction in the platinum content of fuel cell catalysts and the development of durable membrane electrode assemblies with low platinum group metal content. The DOE says the durability of fuel cells has also been improving.



3: How do you make the hydrogen?

To get hydrogen gas, you have to make it. Right now, the cheapest way to get the gas is by reformulating natural gas. "So right away, you're using a carbon-based fuel to get the stuff - not ideal. If produced at high-volume, the cost of hydrogen from renewables/ electrolyzers could be around $5/gge even using today’s electrolyzer technology. The cost of hydrogen from renewables will decrease even further using longer-term approaches (e.g., direct solar photo-electro chemical conversion)." We’ve also reduced the cost of producing hydrogen from renewables by decreasing the cost of electrolyzers by 80% since 2002. And even if natural gas remains as the cheapest way to get the gas, the DOE contends that "because a fuel cell is more than twice as efficient as an internal combustion engine, an FCEV travels farther on that tank of hydrogen than a traditional car would on a tank of gasoline."
Honda says it's also looking at purchasing the hydrogen by-product from refineries around the U.S.  Another way to get the gas is from the water. Using electrolysis you can capture the gas from water. The question becomes: where do you get your electricity to do this? There's more research being done on how to do this with solar energy.

4.The hydrogen gas tank challenge

To store enough hydrogen on a vehicle to get the 200 to 300-mile ranges we are accustomed to, the gas has to be pressurized. High-pressure tanks that can do the job often end up being quite heavy, which starts to affect the car's fuel economy (the heavier the car, the less efficient it often is).To make a tank that can do the job, carbon fiber is often used, and, once again, we're using an expensive material.

Conclusion:
I believe the future belongs to the hydrogen fuel cell but it will take more time to solve the problems that I have mentioned them in above,human has to and there is not any choice to cut his dependency to oil and gas since they are not there forever and we already have made huge damage to our environment. By getting more knowledge and having advance technology I will see that the future belongs to Hydrogen Fuel cell.

resource:

http://michiganradio.org/post/hydrogen-powered-cars-cant-make-it-without-these-4-miracles

My Physics Take-home Midterm Exam

Carl Jung The term synchronicity is coined by Jung to express a concept that belongs to him: the acausal connection between two or more psychic and physical phenomena. as Carl Jung has said" synchronistic moments don't happen just to inspire wonder, they arrive to force people to reconsider their values. I believe in western view Synchronicity is base on more reality and some events that had happened in past, for example, people think about some friends that they have when they were young and from nowhere they meet them the same day or the other day. Also some of those are in common with eastern view as well ,like when some people are thinking that something will happen for them or they are getting nervous and know something will happen to their family or child but they do not have control over it and again it will happen in the same day or the other day. But this concept was not something new in eastern point of view as we have learned this concept had thousands of years old in an ancient Chinese text used for divination called the" I Ching" or "The Book of Changes, In Chinese view it believes that" just as casualty describes the sequence of events, so synchronicity to the Chinese mind deals with the coincidence of events. the casual point of view tells us a dramatic story about how D came into existence: it took its origin from C, which existed before D, and C in its turn had a father, B,etc.on the other hand tries to produce an equally meaningful picture of coincidence. How does it happen that A, B, C, D, etc appear all at the same moment and in the same place? It happens in the first place because the physical events A and B are of the same quality as the psychic events C and D and further because all are the exponents of one and the same momentary situation. The situation is assumed to represent a legible or understandable picture. in western view it has more base on accident event, but In eastern view, they are looking for the way to make the connection between them and some explanation unlike the western view that just thinking of events match to each other as an accident,Also I believe that in eastern it has more feeling and karma to it compare to the west and people thinking about synchronicity in eastern as a cause and looking for a way to solve it and not just as event that just happened.synchronicity is more like Shen(spirits) in Chinese medicine our spirits is able to find the way to make contact between us and our environment. The word"Shen" has connotations that enable it to be related to both personal and impersonal understandings, I think in eastern people are trying to have an emotional and spiritual connection  instead of just think of it as a something accidentally like the west.

Loafing around without feeling guilty Day5

I am super busy with my research paper and so far was not able to stop working on them,I will try tomorrow to do it.

Loafing around without feeling guilty Day4

Today I was able to do not do anything only for two hours, still, I was not feeling that I am relaxed, because I am little behind my research papers.

Loafing around without feeling guilty Day3

well for half a day I just watched TV and did nothing this is the third day that I am doing it and I am scared that I do not have enough time to finish my research paperwork.

Loafing around without feeling guilty Day2

I just woke up but did not do anything the whole day, I got nervous and worried about my research papers but did not want to do anything, I just watched TV and lay down on the sofa all day, but my mind was not with TV and I was thinking only about my Midterm papers.

Loafing around without feeling guilty Day One

I laid down on my bed for 4 hours and did nothing, which it was little boring:)I just closed my eyes and tried not to think about anything.It is good to do nothing for a while but for me could get boring:)