Jun 15 2010
The advent of gasoline-based transportation and the rapid progression of an industry across the globe which has kept on coming up with thousands of models and vehicle variants but not serious looked at an alternative fuel till yet has brought about industry wide concern and the realignment of time and resources to achieving the objective of a cleaner efficient and environmentally compliant fuel. All in order that the sustenance of the transport industry can be ensured as well as justified with building public concern.
The demographics of the transport industry can be seen as about 75% of the total fuel consumption is used to fuel highway vehicles, such as cars, trucks, and buses. In addition, highway vehicles are responsible for over 60% of the carbon monoxide emissions and about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions. These figures combined with recent environmental upsurges in the decades have led to the hunt for a fuel source in vehicles which will achieve multiple objectives of: reducing dependency on imported fuel thereby improving national energy security as well as reduce harmful emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases.
As is often quoted Necessity is the mother of all Inventions, fuel cells have met both the standards of urgent necessity as well as ground breaking invention in this scenario. Many types of Fuel Cell driven prototypes have been unveiled in the past few years wherein Chicago and Vancouver have led the way in introducing Fuel Cells in public transportation as well with trials on buses, trains etc; these initiatives have inspired other cities in North America and Europe to test options of such vehicles in the near future.
The coming decades will see realization of depletion fossil fuel reserves and growing awareness of long term environmental damages caused by incessant usage of such fuels; this will in turn lead the development focus of fuel cells for transport as well as stationary power applications.
However, the rosy picture also presents challenges that should be cleared by every technology before commercialization. Challenges such as cost competitiveness, infrastructure feasibility, power density, efficiency, mileage, cost reduction, component integration, complexity reduction, and increasing safety are the factors which will need to be met in the future to boost the market for fuel cells.
Aruvian's R'searchs report - Analyzing Transportation Fuel Cells - focuses on the development, feasibility and overall success rate for the introduction of fuel cells as the primary power source in the transportation industry wherein it presents the right credentials to become the fuel of the future and gradually substitute the usage of gasoline in the transportation industry.
The report presents a historical perspective on the identification of transportation as a societal necessity with developing economies and some of the early efforts on fuel cell technology development. These studies have been tabulated in the report to present a perspective on the current as well as extended applications in the transport industry which the fuel cells present in the future.
The reasons or the need factors which are driving the demand for the development of fuel cell technologies legislative or resource depletion projections, along with the constraints to the widespread usage of fuel cells as noticed currently are also explained in this report.
The report then delves in detail into the basics of a fuel cell, its basic components and the various fuel cell designs as are being put to test and implementation by various industry participants. The inter technology competition offered to Fuel Cell Technologies along with comparative analysis of FCT with other conventional technologies and the key technical challenges that the technology is facing are examined in this report in detail.
The report also categorizes the transport applications of Fuel Cells along with the economic parameters of Fuel Cell Technology being applied in commercial perspective backed by the governments role to support this technology through investment and legislation.
This report presents a present and future outlook on the penetration of the Fuel Cells by application in industry usage and a profiling of the major fuel cell developers globally. The report provides a complete and comprehensive position of the Fuel Cell Technology and whether it can prove its credentials to the transportation industry to bring about widespread and far reaching changes to the environmental map of the world.