Life Cycle Assessment And Experimental Research On Electricity Generation Via Aluminium/water Reaction And Fuel Cell

Environmental problems such as energy shortage and air pollution are quickening the tempo of energy transformation.Hydrogen is considered as an ideal clean fuel and has attracted increasing worldwide interest.Hydrogen production via aluminum/water reaction is an environmentally attractive way to utilize aluminum as energy carrier without using fossil fuels.The combination of aluminum/water reaction and PEMFC system can provide power for vehicle,which decreases the energy consumption and environmental pollution causing by gasoline vehicle.This article firstly focused on the theoretical research on energy conversion from aluminum to vehicle fuel.Using the principle of well-to-wheel analysis,a life cycle assessment was done to determine the pollutant emissions and energy consumption by considering three kind of vehicle system include aluminum-fuel cell vehicle,electric vehicle and gasoline vehicle.The life cycle assessment divides into four steps: the identification of purpose and scope,detailed list analysis,impact assessment and results explanation.The result showed that system of aluminum-fuel cell vehicle performs valuable environmental benefit and moderate energy consumption,which will be further optimize as the reduction of sodium hydroxide input to the reaction system.With the maturity of new vehicle fuel utilization and the optimization of China's power structure,electric vehicles and other new models,such as aluminum-fuel cell vehicle,will be expected to replace gasoline vehicles and become one of the main vehicles in the automotive industry.In order to analyze the technological properties of aluminum-fuel cell system and verify the feasibility of the theoretical design route,the research conducted coupling experiments on aluminum/water reaction system and proton exchange membrane fuel cell(PEMFC)systems based on the theoretical designing of life cycle assessment.The fuel cell was also tested under the condition of stable hydrogen supply as the calibration experiment.The characteristics of hydrogen flow and power generation were obtained by verifying the aluminum/water reactant ratio and load resistance in circuit.Furthermore,this research obtained the optimum reaction conditions and summarized the improvement direction for the aluminum-fuel cell system.The results showed that the coupling system allows broader range of the hydrogen flow rate and the reaction conditions are achieved easily.It can be concluded that the overall scheme is feasible since the aluminum-fuel cell system operates stably.The research also found that the stability of hydrogen flow has a great impact on the power generation performance,which means improving the stability of hydrogen supply is an effective approach to improve the practical value of aluminum/water reaction.