(81f) Case Study of Particle Technology Application in Automotive Industry

Hydrogen driven fuel cell cars are being developed to meet the transportation needs of the future when hydrogen is poised to be a major source of energy. These cars have been widely publicized and demonstrated at various auto shows all around the world. The next generation of the hydrogen driven fuel cell car is being designed by a leading automotive company, which uses solid hydrogen carrying solid fuel and mixes with water onboard the vehicle to generate hydrogen. Once the hydrogen is generated from the reaction of hydrogen carrying solid fuel and water, the resultant solution is dried to recover back the water to process in a recirculation loop onboard the vehicle. The dried product is then stored in a disposal container and sent to a chemical plant to be regenerated. Such improvements drastically reduce the total water requirement, alkali requirement as well as transportation costs of fuel. To realize this process, it is important to build a powder mixing and a solution drying device, which conform to the specifications of the vehicle. Unfortunately, the design team of the hydrogen driven fuel cell cars are often not familiar with the solid handling systems and the particle technology. Their academic and professional training is more often than not inadequate. As a result, our research group was approached to design a unique powder handling system for their fuel cell car. Both graduate and undergraduate students were involved in this project as well as the industrial technologists. The novelty of the project was strongly motivating the academia, while the automotive industry was eager to get familiar and learn the basics of the particle technology which are essential for developing the next generation fuel cell cars. Thus, through this project, the faculty, students and industry were all benefited. This project is now being incorporated into an elective course as a good example of novel applications of the particles technology.