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Natural Gas Pollution And Environmental Factors In The Reduction Of Fuel Cells

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As it can be seen from the above figure, the use of Fuel Cells results in the reduction of CO, SOx,
NMHC, NOx and PM emissions by one to two orders of magnitude. There are almost zero PM emissions for natural gas fueled FC cars. Also, there is upto 60% reduction in CO2 emissions, which reduces the overall global warming co-efficient significantly. One more interesting conclusion is that most of the emissions in FC cars occur in natural gas extraction or methanol production stage and not during the end usage of the vehicles. Therefore, fuel cell cars can potentially provide higher environmental benefits if the fuel supply infrastructure is improved.

3.2 FUEL CELL TECHNOLOGY FOR BUSES –

It is believed the buses can be a good early …show more content…

As compared to the diesel buses complying with
EURO 5 emissions standards, the environmental benefits of the Fuel Cell buses will be
EURO2001 0.06/ per km. The fuel cell buses also show a fair amount of reduction in noise pollution as compared to the Diesel buses. Although the current environmental benefits of Fuel
Cell buses are less compared to the annualized purchase cost of the prototype FC bus, mass- production of the fuel cell buses can make those benefits significant.

3.3 FUEL CELLS IN COMBINED HEAT AND POWER APPLICATIONS –

More than 15% of the total energy use in the United States is from the residential sector, whose annual cost exceeds $5 Billion [7]. The supply of power for majority residences is from remote power generation plants, whose efficiency in less than 15 %, Also, the waste heat generated by these plants cannot be used efficiently, which results in the wastage of resources and unwanted emissions of Greenhouse gases.

Combined Heat and power generation systems are good alternatives for this, which can use the waste heat generated during power generation for heating applications. This can result in better efficiency and fewer emissions from the system. However, the use of conventional power generation technologies in these applications is not feasible due to a number of drawbacks like excessive pollutant emissions, noise, high cost, frequent maintenance requirements etc. Fuel
Cell

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