Have you heard of hydrogen, electric cars? You probaby have, especially because their eco-friendly qualities make them an attractive alternative for transportation.
Former Costa Rican astronaut Franklin Chang and his company, Ad Astra Rocket, are driving the high pressure, hydrogen-storage project to create a generator that works as source of energy for these cars in Costa Rica in order to eliminate vehicular pollution.
Conventional vehicles have internal combustion engines in which fossil fuels are burned to release energy and generate movement. However, hydrogen electric vehicles have no internal combustion engine, but an electric one.
According to engineer Juan Del Valle Gamboa, COO of Ad Astra Rocket, the benefits of hydrogen, electric cars are different for the user and the environment.
Hydrogen is where the energy used by the electric motor, to drive the vehicle, is stored and to generate electricity for the electric motor, hydrogen combines itself with oxygen in the air, generating electricity and steam byproduct water. In addtion, it only takes 5 to 15 minutes to fill these kind of cars.
According to del Valle, hydrogen, electric vehicles have similar advantages to conventional vehicles (range, performance and filling time), with the benefit of not polluting and being silent.
As a result, the project of a hydrogen-dispensing station will be ready by the end of March 2017.
Doctor José Castro Nieto, scientific director of the company declared that Ad Astra Rocket is working with the Development Banking System to create a network of national and international companies to enable a hydrogen, electric bus that will cover the route from Liberia to Daniel Oduber airport. He also informed that hydrogen is more efficient than other fossil fuels because the amount of stored energy in one kilogram of hydrogen is more than 2.5 times the amount of stored energy in one kilogram of gasoline. In addition, it can be produced with local resources in a completely environmentally and friendly way.
Moreover, tt also has the advantage of not relying on the international markets of energy or fuel and it could allow Costa Rica to move toward energy independence.
Castro concluded that to use hydrogen technologies in national territory goes beyond electric vehicles for transportation, because hydrogen is a very convenient way to store solar and wind energy on a large-scale mechanism.