Building a car that is powered by formic acid. That is the ambition of Team FAST, a new student team from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).
Since formic acid can store hydrogen, an environmentally-friendly fuel, it has more benefits than existing hydrogen or electric powered cars. Today
the team presents the first concrete step: a scale model, a meter in size, which is able to drive on formic acid alone.
By using formic acid as a fuel, the TU/e student team Team FAST hopes to combine the strengths of electric and hydrogen powered cars without any of
the drawbacks. Electric cars depend on batteries and thus have a limited range. An electric car can go further using hydrogen but the drawback here is
that hydrogen is expensive to transport and store, and it also has to be transported under high pressure.
High speed
Formic acid - so called because ants (formica in Latin) and other insects can produce it - offers the possibility to store hydrogen easily. A chemical
reaction, discovered last year by TU/e researchers, enables hydrogen and CO2 to be converted at high speed into formic acid, and vice versa. Due to
the liquid nature of formic acid, hydrogen can be transported easily and cheaply.
Equivalent to gasoline
Team FAST sees possibilities for these reactions to take place in a car, whereby hydrogen is used to power an electric engine. For the consumer using
formic acid will be like using gasoline. This similarity will also ensure that formic acid can easily be incorporated into the existing fuel
infrastructure, Next to that, formic acid can be much more widely applied as an energy carrier; solar and wind energy can also be stored in formic
acid, and then used when required. |