B
Recommendations from the National Research Council’s
Review of the Research Program of the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership: Third Report
CHAPTER 2: MAJOR CROSSCUTTING ISSUES
Safety
Recommendation [2-1]. The Partnership should establish a program to address all end-to-end safety aspects in addition to the existing codes and standards work. This work should be based on the pathways work and should include production, distribution, dispensing, and the vehicles. It should apply to all six alternative fuels and their associated vehicle types, including the use of high-voltage electricity on many of these vehicles. [NRC, 2010, p. 42.]
Recommendation [2-2]. The Partnership should generate and act on a failure modes and effects analysis of the full pressure vessel assembly, which includes the attached components and the human interface at the pump. Accelerated laboratory tests need to be run to identify failure/degradation modes of the pressure vessel and the mechanisms leading to failure. A nondestructive test program needs to be developed to assess pressure vessel integrity, which should serve both as a tool for quality control and as a means of checking for damage in service. The work on the analysis of worldwide natural gas and hydrogen incidents should continue. An R&D program should be established to develop a new generation of pressure-relief devices that can protect the storage tank from localized fire. [NRC, 2010, p. 42.]
Recommendation [2-3]. The hydrogen compatibility (including embrittlement) program should be continued. The Partnership should have experts in hydrogen embrittlement review the operating conditions and materials in the high-pressure delivery and refueling stations for potential problem areas, including welds and nonmetallic materials. [NRC, 2010, p. 42.]
Recommendation [2-4]. The Partnership should establish an emergency response R&D program with the involvement of emergency responders and research organizations to do fundamental work on the response to incidents involving alternative fuels. High-voltage batteries and electrical systems should also be included. [NRC, 2010, p. 42.]
Recommendation [2-5]. The Partnership should fully integrate the DOT safety efforts into the safety and the codes and standards aspects of the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership. All relevant parts of the DOT should be included: those involving passenger vehicles, trucks, the hydrogen bus program, pipelines and hazardous materials, fuel delivery trailers, and others. Alternative fuels should be included. The DOE and the Partnership’s Executive Steering Group should consider adding a high-level DOT representative to the ESG. [NRC, 2010, pp. 42-43.]
Battery Electric and Plug-in Hybrid Electric
Vehicles and the U.S. Electric Grid
Recommendation [2-6]. The grid interaction technical team should work with state utility regulatory authorities, perhaps through the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, to ensure that the incentives provided by state regulations mesh well with the national interest in vehicle deployment, reduced oil consumption, and lower greenhouse gas emissions. [NRC, 2010, p. 49.]
Recommendation [2-7]. The grid interaction technical team should continue to encourage and, where appropriate, facilitate the ongoing development of open-architecture standards for smart-vehicle/smart-grid interconnections currently being developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Society of Automotive Engineers. In doing so, the technical team should encourage participation from the purveyors of smart-grid systems and battery suppliers as well as from the electric utility industry. [NRC, 2010, pp. 49-50.]
Recommendation [2-8]. Standards for the reuse of electric vehicle batteries should be developed under leadership of the grid interaction technical team, and training materials for the use of these standards should be developed in parallel. [NRC, 2010, p. 50.]
Persisting Trends in Automotive Innovation:
Implications for the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership
Recommendation [2-9]. The Partnership should consider including manufacturing processes among the precompetitive R&D programs. Because its funding originates in the United States, the Partnership should emphasize the technologies and methods most capable of realizing advanced vehicle production in the United States, to the extent that this is feasible. [NRC, 2010, p. 51.]
Recommendation [2-10]. As the basic platform of the automobile becomes more modular, interface standards will be required to enable greater competition among technology alternatives. While specific interface standards have been discussed elsewhere in this report, the Partnership should also consider conducting a more general review of areas in which industry-wide standards could accelerate the pace of innovation and lower its cost. [NRC, 2010, p. 51.]
Recommendation [2-11]. The Partnership should seek out and implement methods to allow new, nontraditional suppliers—especially, emerging entrepreneurial companies—to participate in the innovation process. The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program can become a highly productive source of innovation, and the Partnership should review its linkages with this program and strengthen them where appropriate. [NRC, 2010, p. 52.]
Environmental Impacts of Alternative Pathways
Recommendation [2-12]. The Partnership should undertake a review of the state of methods and case studies that have been carried out on environmental impacts related to the technologies under development. This review would answer some remaining open questions and help direct systems studies so as to maximize their efforts to characterize the environmental impacts of different fuel pathways. [NRC, 2010, p. 55.]
Recommendation [2-13]. The Partnership should strengthen the links between the systems analysis teams and the technical teams. In particular, technological goals and targets should include consideration of priorities established in systems analysis, and systems analysis should be conducted on emerging technologies identified by the technical teams. [NRC, 2010, p. 55.]
Recommendation [2-14]. The Partnership should consider incorporating the broader scope of a “cradle-to-grave” analysis rather than a “source (well)-to-wheels” approach in program planning from production to recycling in order to better consider total energy consumption, total emissions, and the total environmental impact of various energy/vehicle pathways and technologies. [NRC, 2010, p. 55.]
CHAPTER 3: VEHICLE SUBSYSTEMS
Advanced Combustion, Emissions Control, and Hydrocarbon Fuels
Recommendation [3-1]. The DOE should continue to support financially, be active in, and work to further enhance the collaborations among the national laboratories, industry, and academia in order most effectively to direct research
efforts to areas where enhanced fundamental understanding is most needed to improve internal combustion engine and aftertreatment power-train performance. [NRC, 2010, p. 64.]
Recommendation [3-2]. The DOE should continue to support the development and dissemination of the open-source-code computational fluid dynamics program KIVA. This tool is critical to integrating the new understanding of combustion and emission processes into a framework that allows it to be used to guide further research and identify fuel and engine operating conditions that will maximize reductions in fuel consumption over the entire operating range of the engine. [NRC, 2010, p. 64.]
Recommendation [3-3]. The advanced combustion and emission control technical team should engage with the biofuels research community to ensure that the biofuels research which the team is conducting is consistent with and leverages the latest developments in the field of biofuels R&D. [NRC, 2010, p. 64.]
Recommendation [3-4]. As the vehicle mix within the on-the-road light-duty vehicle fleet is likely to change with the implementation of the new fuel economy standards, the advanced combustion and emission control technical team should interface with the system modeling technical team to make sure that their research programs are consistent with the changing demands for the optimal matching of the engine operational regimes, power management, and emission control that will be imposed on the internal combustion engine and hybrid power trains as the vehicle characteristics evolve. [NRC, 2010, pp. 64-65.]
Fuel Cells
Recommendation [3-5]. As the auto companies begin to down-select technologies for fuel cell vehicles, they must focus their limited R&D resources on development engineering for the platform selected and move into the competitive (as distinct from precompetitive) arena. The only way that alternative fuel cell systems and components can receive sufficient attention to mitigate the overall program risk is for the precompetitive program, sponsored largely by the DOE, to support them. Thus, the DOE should increase its focus on precompetitive R&D related to both the fuel cell stack and the balance of plant—the other components of the fuel cell system required for successful operation, such as controls, fuel storage, instrumentation, and so forth—to develop alternatives to the down-selected technologies. [NRC, 2010, p. 72.]
Recommendation [3-6]. The DOE should incorporate more of the advanced, most recent, nonproprietary OEM system configuration specifications in the various systems and cost models for fuel cell power plants. Systems configurations no
longer demonstrated to be optimal should be abandoned in favor of best proven technology. [NRC, 2010, p. 72.]
Recommendation [3-7]. The DOE should establish backup technology paths, in particular for stack operation modes and stack components, with the fuel cell technical team to address the case of current technology selections determined not likely to meet the targets. The DOE should assess which critical technology development efforts are not yielding sufficient progress and ensure that adequate levels of support for alternative pathways are in place. [NRC, 2010, p. 72.]
Recommendation [3-8]. The DOE, with input from the fuel cell technical team, should evaluate, and in selected cases accelerate, the timing of the “go/no-go” decisions when it is evident that significant technological progress has been made and adopted by the OEMs. [NRC, 2010, p. 72.]
Onboard Hydrogen Storage
Recommendation [3-9]. The centers of excellence are well managed and have provided an excellent approach for organizing and managing a large, diverse research activity with many participants at various locations. Measures should be taken to continue research on the most promising approaches for onboard hydrogen storage materials. The complete documentation and communication of findings should be undertaken for all materials examined for the completed R&D. Furthermore, in view of the fact that the hydrogen storage program has been in place for less than a decade, the Partnership should strongly support continuing the funding of basic research activities. Public domain contractor reports should be available through links on the DOE EERE Web site. [NRC, 2010, pp. 83-84.]
Recommendation [3-10]. Research on compressed-gas storage should be expanded to include safety-related activities that determine cost and/or weight, such as validation of the design point for burst pressure ratio at beginning of life and end of life and evaluation of Type 3 versus Type 4 storage vessels. Furthermore, finite-element modeling of stresses and heat flow in fires, investigative work on wraps (i.e., translation efficiency), and analysis of applicability of compressed-gas storage to specific vehicle types would be beneficial. [NRC, 2010, p. 84.]
Recommendation [3-11]. The high cost of aerospace-quality carbon fiber is a major impediment to achieving cost-effective compressed-hydrogen storage. The reduction of fiber cost and the use of alternative fibers should be a major focus for the future. Systems analysis methodology should be applied to needed critical cost reductions. [NRC, 2010, p. 84.]
Recommendation [3-12]. The hydrogen storage program is one of the most critical parts of the hydrogen/fuel cell vehicle part of the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership—both for physical (compressed gas) and for materials storage. It should continue to be funded, especially the systems-level work in the Hydrogen Storage Engineering COE. Efforts should also be directed to compressed-gas storage to help achieve weight and cost reduction while maintaining safety. [NRC, 2010, p. 84.]
Recommendation [3-13]. The time for charging the hydrogen storage material with hydrogen (refueling time) is a program goal (3 minutes for a 5 kg charge). Concepts beyond materials properties alone should be explored to meet this challenge for customer satisfaction, and will require coordination with the areas of production, off-board storage, and dispensing. [NRC, 2010, p. 84.]
Recommendation [3-14]. There should be an effort to anticipate hydrogen storage material property and performance requirements that will place demands on developed systems—for example, purity and response to impurities, aging and lifetime prediction, and safety in adverse environments. Linkage between the hydrogen storage and production and delivery activities should receive attention.
[NRC, 2010, p. 84.]
Recommendation [3-15]. The search for suitable onboard hydrogen storage materials has been broadly based, and significant progress is reported. Nonetheless the current materials are not close to the long-range goals of the Partnership. Onboard hydrogen storage R&D risks losing out to near-term applications for future emphasis and funding. The management of a long-term/short-term joint portfolio should be given consideration. [NRC, 2010, pp. 84-85.]
Electrochemical Energy Storage
Recommendation [3-16]. The Partnership should revisit and modify, as necessary, the goals and targets for battery electric vehicles in view of the changing market conditions and improvements in technologies. [NRC, 2010, p. 93.]
Recommendation [3-17]. The Partnership should significantly intensify its efforts to develop improved materials and systems for high-energy batteries for both plug-in electric vehicles and battery electric vehicles. [NRC, 2010, p. 93.]
Recommendation [3-18]. The Partnership should conduct a study to determine the cost of recycling batteries and the potential of savings from recycled materials. A research program on improved processes for recycling advanced batteries should be initiated in order to reduce the cost of the processes and recover useful materials and to reduce potentially hazardous toxic waste and, if necessary, to explore and develop new processes that preserve and recycle a much larger portion of the battery values. [NRC, 2010, p. 93.]
Electric Propulsion and Electrical Systems
Recommendation [3-19]. The Partnership should continue to focus on activities to reduce the cost, size, and losses in the power electronics and electrical machines. [NRC, 2010, p. 105.]
Recommendation [3-20]. The Partnership should conduct a project to evaluate the effect of battery charging on lithium-ion battery packs as a function of the cell chemistries, cell geometries, and configurations in the pack; battery string voltages; and numbers of parallel strings. A standardized method for these evaluations should be developed to ensure the safety of battery packs during vehicle operation as well as during plug-in charging. [NRC, 2010, p. 105.]
Recommendation [3-21]. The Partnership should consider conducting a project to investigate induction motors as replacements for the permanent magnet motors now almost universally used for electric propulsion. [NRC, 2010, p. 105.]
Structural Materials
Recommendation [3-22]. The materials technical team should develop a systems-analysis methodology to determine the currently most cost-effective way for achieving a 50 percent weight reduction for hybrid and fuel cell vehicles. The materials team needs to evaluate how the cost penalty changes as a function of the percent weight reduction, assuming that the most effective mix of materials is used at each step in the weight-reduction process. The analysis should be updated on a regular basis as the cost structures change as a result of process research breakthroughs and commercial developments. [NRC, 2010, p. 108.]
Recommendation [3-23]. The magnesium castings study is completed, and no further technical effort is anticipated by the Partnership as recommended in the Phase 2 report. However, magnesium castings should be considered in completing the cost reduction recommendation listed above. [NRC, 2010, p. 109.]
Recommendation [3-24]. Methods for the recycling of carbon-reinforced composites need to be developed. [NRC, 2010, p. 109.]
CHAPTER 4: HYDROGEN AND BIOFUELS
Hydrogen Fuel Pathways
Recommendation [4-1]. The DOE should broaden the role of the fuel pathways integration technical team (FPITT) to include an investigation of the pathways to provide energy for all three approaches currently included in the Partnership.
This broader role could include not only the current technical subgroups for hydrogen, but also subgroups on biofuels utilization in advanced internal combustion engines and electricity generation requirements for PHEVs and BEVs, with appropriate industrial representation on each. The role of the parent FPITT would be to integrate the efforts of these subgroups and to provide an overall perspective of the issues associated with providing the required energy in a variety of scenarios that meet future personal transportation needs. [NRC, 2010, p. 118.]
Hydrogen Production
Hydrogen Production from Coal and Biomass
Recommendation [4-2]. The DOE’s Fuel Cell Technologies program and the Office of Fossil Energy should continue to emphasize the importance of demonstrated CO2 disposal in enabling essential pathways for hydrogen production, especially for coal. [NRC, 2010, pp. 120-121.]
Recommendation [4-3]. The Fuel Cell Technologies program should adjust its Technology Roadmap to account for the possibility that CO2 sequestration will not enable a midterm readiness for commercial hydrogen production from coal. It should also consider the consequences to the program of apparent large increases in U.S. natural gas reserves. [NRC, 2010, p. 121.]
Recommendation [4-4]. The EERE should continue to work closely with the Office of Fossil Energy to vigorously pursue advanced chemical and biological concepts for carbon disposal as a hedge against the inability of geological storage to deliver a publicly acceptable and cost-effective solution in a timely manner. The committee also notes that some of the technologies now being investigated might offer benefits in the small-scale capture and sequestration of carbon from distributed sources. [NRC, 2010, p. 121.]
Recommendation [4-5]. The DOE should continue to evaluate the availability of biological feedstocks for hydrogen in light of the many other claims on this resource—liquid fuels, chemical feedstocks, electricity, food, and others. [NRC, 2010, p. 121.]
Reforming of Bio-Derived Fuels
Recommendation [4-6]. The Partnership should prioritize the many biomass-to-biofuel-to-hydrogen process pathways in order to bring further focus to development in this very broad area. [NRC, 2010, p. 123.]
High-Temperature Thermochemical Splitting of Water
Recommendation [4-7]. The Partnership should consider conducting a workshop to ensure that all potentially attractive high-temperature thermochemical cycles have been identified, and it should carry out a systems analysis of candidate systems to identify the most promising approaches, which can then be funded as money becomes available. [NRC, 2010, p. 123.]
Recommendation [4-8]. The EERE funding for high-temperature thermochemical cycle projects has varied widely and is very low in FY 2009. The committee believes that these centralized production techniques are important, and thus adequate and stable funding for them should be considered. [NRC, 2010, pp. 123-124.]
Electrolytic Processes
Recommendation [4-9]. Water electrolysis should remain an integral part of the future hydrogen infrastructure development. The DOE should continue to fund novel water electrolysis materials and methods, including alternative membranes, alternative catalysts, high-temperature and -pressure operation, advanced engineering concepts, and systems analysis. Additional efforts should be placed on advanced integration concepts in which the electrolyzer is co-engineered with subsequent upstream and downstream unit operations to improve the overall efficiency of a stand-alone system. [NRC, 2010, p. 126.]
Wind- and Solar-Driven Electrolysis
Recommendation [4-10]. Commercial demonstrations should be encouraged for new designs based on established electrolytic processes. For newer concepts such as high-temperature solid oxide systems, efforts should remain focused on laboratory evaluations of the potential for lifetime and durability, as well as on laboratory performance assessments. [NRC, 2010, p. 126.]
Recommendation [4-11]. Work on close coupling of wind and solar energy with electrolysis should be continued with stable funding. Further improvements in electrolyzers, including higher stack pressure, and in power electronics will benefit this application. [NRC, 2010, p. 126.]
Photolytic Processes
Recommendation [4-12]. The Partnership should examine the goals for the photolytic approach to producing hydrogen using microorganisms and formulate a vision with defined targets. Otherwise, this approach should be deemphasized as an active research area for hydrogen production. [NRC, 2010, p. 128.]
Hydrogen Delivery, Dispensing, and Transition Supply
Recommendation [4-13]. Hydrogen delivery, storage, and dispensing should be based on the program needed to achieve the cost goal for 2017. If it is not feasible to achieve that cost goal, emphasis should be placed on those areas that would most directly impact the 2015 decision regarding commercialization. In the view of the committee, pipeline, liquefaction, and compression programs are likely to have the greatest impact in the 2015 time frame. The cost target should be revised to be consistent with the program that is carried out. [NRC, 2010, p. 129.]
Biofuels for Internal Combustion Engines
Recommendation [4-14]. A thorough systems analysis of the complete biofuel distribution and end-use system should be done. This should include (1) an analysis of the fuel- and engine-efficiency gains possible through ICE technology development with likely particular biofuels or mixtures of biofuels and conventional petroleum fuels, and (2) a thorough analysis of the biofuel distribution system needed to deliver these possible fuels or mixtures to the end-use application. [NRC, 2010, p. 132.]
REFERENCE
NRC (National Research Council). 2010. Review of the Research Program of the FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership: Third Report. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press.
