Houston Chronicle by Dug Begley 12/22/2022
Houston company hopes for big lift: Renewable, carbon-capture battery power for big trucks, buses
In what used to be a Fiesta grocery in Midtown, now the Houston hub of Greentown Labs, Moore's company, SolidOx Motors is working on a prototype that uses solid oxide fuel cells to simultaneously power a vehicle and recharge a large electrical battery. It then recaptures the carbon dioxide produced by that process. The result, he hopes, is an emissions-free engine that uses ethanol or methanol, both of which are easier to obtain and store than hydrogen, which should make refueling infrastructure easier and cheaper to build.
If successful, Moore envisions a solution for long-haul trucking and buses, extending both the daily battery life for big vehicles and the travel range for transport companies.
deally, he said, a bus or large truck could be charged when convenient, such as at night, but use the solid oxide cells during the day to potentially double the battery's 200-mile range. For long-haul trucks or buses operating 12 hours a day, that could be the link that makes electric drivetrains legitimate.
Ethanol is readily available in the United States. while methanol is plentiful in Europe. Either can activate solid oxide fuel cells and generate the power for an electric vehicle, Moore said.
Solid oxide fuel cells simply involves different elements in the chemical reaction. In this case, mostly oxygen. Unlike the lithium phone batters that can reach a temperature of about 100 degrees, the solid oxide cell creates a reaction that reaches 1,000 degrees. The engineering and design is keeping all that heat inside the battery, and putting it to use to power the vehicle.
"It sounds scary at first, but it is much more controlled," Moore said.
When the solid oxide battery cells react with ethanol, they produce carbon dioxide, which Moore's system sucks back into the tank. As the ethanol leaves, the CO2 remains. That allows for sequestration of the carbon dioxide, pumping it off anytime the vehicle refuels its ethanol tank.
More:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/transportation/article/SolidOx-greentown-labs-houston-17587268.php
