Modern fuel cell technology

Environmental protection is an important direction for the automotive industry. Recently, Hyundai Motor officially announced its fuel cell technology and announced the use of fuel cell ix35 Fuel Cell models. Let's take a look at this relatively rare new energy and environmental protection technology.

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What is Fuel Cell

Fuel Cell is literally translated as a fuel cell. It uses the chemical reaction of fuel and oxidant to directly convert it into electricity. However, it cannot store electricity and can only produce electricity. The difference between a fuel cell and a conventional battery is that the fuel cell needs to continuously input fuel and oxidant into the battery during operation, and as long as the supply continues, the fuel cell will continue to provide electrical energy.

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

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After understanding what a fuel cell is, let's take a look at the chassis of the modern ix35 Fuel Cell model. We can divide it into three parts, the drive part, the energy storage part, and the hydrogen storage tank. Corresponds to the red, green, and yellow parts of the diagram below.

● The driving part of the driving part is located at the front of the engine compartment of the traditional gasoline engine model. The ix35 Fuel Cell is a fuel cell model. The reaction of the oxyhydrogen cell occurs in the reaction chamber of the fuel cell. The chemical energy of the fuel is directly converted into electric energy, thus providing the motor with Power, driving the vehicle forward, and the reaction is only water, which is another advantage of this fuel cell model.

● At the beginning of the article on energy storage, it was mentioned that one of the disadvantages of fuel cells is that they can only generate electricity and cannot store energy. The ix35 Fuel Cell is equipped with a bi-directional high-voltage DC converter and battery to recover the excess energy released by the fuel cell under braking, coasting and under low load conditions through an energy recovery system. The ix35 Fuel Cell is stored in the battery for driving and powering the vehicle. The device provides additional energy and extends cruising range.

● The hydrogen storage tank ix35 Fuel Cell has two different hydrogen storage tanks at the rear of the vehicle. It can store a total of 5.64kg of liquid hydrogen. In addition, liquid hydrogen can be added to the vehicle through the liquid hydrogen filling port. Note time is about a few minutes.

to sum up:

At the Paris Motor Show, Hyundai announced that it will mass-produce the ix35 Fuel Cell model and will provide private rental services. However, this time it is no match for us. The ix35 Fuel Cell models and private rental services are only available in Europe. Because the "fuel" used is liquid hydrogen, the practicality of such models is directly constrained by the number of hydrogen refueling stations. Although current fuel cell technology has matured, it is still too far away for “fuel cell vehicles” to talk about “popularization” before hydrogen refueling stations can flourish like gas stations.