Technical Issues of Fuel Cell Systems for Automotive Application

Fuel cell systems are seen as the ultimate solution to environmental issues such as CO(2) emissions and air pollution. There is much current work aimed at developing FC vehicles (FCVs), which are expected to be on the market around 2003. However, in order to achieve widespread use of FCVs, they will need to provide the same performance, cost, and reliability as vehicles with internal combustion engines and hybrid electric vehicles. It is estimated that hydrogen FCVs can achieve the lowest CO(2) emissions while reformate FCVs can attain the same level as diesel hybrid electric vehicles. The important technical issues of the FC stack system involve improving the efficiency and start ability at temperature below 0 degrees C. The central technical issues of the reformate system are to improve efficiency and reduce start-up time. The most critical challenge for the popularization of FCVs is to achieve cost reductions and performance improvements simultaneously.