Yes, Gore-Tex Your Car
by: Sahail Ashraf
Posted on: Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 7:45 pm by: Sahail Ashraf
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Gore-Tex is going to make every car driver a hybrid car driver. Well, at least that is what a bunch of scientists hope…
Scientists in Australia are helping to make fuel cell vehicles something that everyone can afford due to a brand-new, ground-breaking breakthrough in design. They reckon they have found a way to cut the need to use platinum in fuel cell catalysts. This is exciting because platinum is expensive, and adds a lot to the cost of fuel cell vehicles.
The team that made the breakthrough at Victoria-based Monash University, are heralding the discovery as having the potential to make FCVs a lot more cost effective to manufacture. And guess what it is all about? Gore-Tex.
Yes, that’s right. The preserve of countless outdoor types and hikers, or weekend hill-jockeys, Gore-Tex is now just about ready to enter the world of hybrid motoring. It seems the water-resistant capability that Gore-Tex clothing has is the key to making fuel cells less expensive to make.
A statement from the university team assures us that the kind of impact that Gore-Tex has had on the outdoor clothing industry could very easily be replicated in the automotive industry, if the technology were to be adopted. So the moment when you open up your vehicle to find the Gore-Tex logo emblazoned on the metal could be sooner than you think.
So what is the Big Idea? Well, it is all about something called an air-electrode. This bit is a little complicated.
A special fabric is coated with an extremely thin layer of highly conductive plastic. This thin layer of plastic, by the way, is only 0.4 microns thick, about 100 times thinner than human hair. This new kind of electrode acts as both the fuel-cell electrode and the catalyst.
When your Gore-Tex clad hiker walks up a particularly draining hill, waste water vapour is sucked out of the material to make the hiker more comfortable. This also makes them less prone to hypothermia.
In your car, if it is fitted with this new technology, the new material ‘breathes’ oxygen into the fuel cell and into contact with the hyper conductive plastic.
Obviously, the university is very excited about this breakthrough. They are hailing it as the most important development in fuel-cell technology in the last twenty years. This is principally because it will save car makers a mountain of money. Platinum is incredibly expensive. But because it acts as the catalyst with fuel cells, it is currently indispensible. If the new technology takes well, the repercussions when it comes to manufacturing costs are huge.
Platinum effectively restricts the rest of the world (i.e. the non-hybrid world) from getting on the hybrid bus. The cost, in fact, of the platinum in a small fuel cell based car with a 134-hp electric engine is, staggeringly, more than the cost of a complete 134-hp gasoline engine.
And when you look at the bigger picture, the worldwide production of the precious metal is currently only capable of sustaining a fuel-cell fleet that is a fraction of the size of the worlds’ current output of vehicles. Completely unsustainable, in other words.
The tests at the university have been rigorous, to say the least. The new fuel cell has been put through its paces, with over 1,500 hours of tests. The good news is that there has been no been no visible signs of wear and tear.
So next time you are down at the outdoor shop, or within close proximity, spare a thought for your kindred spirits browsing through the jackets and the boots. They are more like you than you think.
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