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Speeding Up the Eco-car Revolution
Jun 10, 2008
Positive News Issue 56 |
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The Swatch group Chairman, Nicholas Hayek, has launched a project to speed up research into an ecological energy system, harnessing sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. It would also solve the main problem of using hydrogen to power cars.
Nicholas Hayek is more usually associated with the Swiss watch industry but he created a solar powered car, Spirit of Biel, 20 years ago. He later designed the compact Smart Car, originally intended to run off a hybrid engine.
Nicholas’s latest venture – the Belenos Clean Power company, named after the Sun God of the Celts – has adopted a four-pronged approach. The first is to develop a commercially viable way of mass producing hydrogen by splitting water into its component parts using solar energy. Harnessing the sun’s power will sidestep the current problem of greenhouse gases emitted during hydrogen production.
Nicholas plans to ‘decentralise’ the process by producing an electrolysis device no bigger than a household washing machine. Hydrogen would then be produced in people’s homes, avoiding the need for large factories.
The company’s other objectives are to increase the efficiency of fuel cells, batteries and photovoltaic cells. These could then be used cheaply to drive cars, giving a similar performance to petrol powered vehicles.
Some experts say it will take decades before hydrogen-powered cars can go into commercial production but Mr Hayek believes that the automobile giants have made enough progress in recent years to achieve results more quickly.
“It is a question of how many people work energetically on the solution,” he told the world motoring organisation, La Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, at their conference in Lucerne.
The important thing is that hydrogen is made using renewables. Rather than producing the cars or the engines of the future themselves, Belenos Clean Power will licence their patented technology to the auto industry.
Contact: www.belenoscleanpower.com
Photo: Spirit of Biel © www.swisspirit.ch
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