Hyundai Nexo. Credit : Hyundai Teknologi.id - Hydrogen-powered cars may be the future, but we still don‘t know about it. Producing hydrogen can be an expensive and not entirely clean process, but these cars are easy to fill up and emit nothing but water vapour. However Hyundai recently revealed that they are even better than that, their fuel cell-powered Nexo actually cleans the air. Hyundai recently took its Nexo on a bit of a campaign in UK in order to prove people that hydrogen technology is safe, reliable and easy to live with. Nexo travelled a total of 350 miles on the streets of London, including its dirtiest streets, such as Marylebone Road and Park Lane that are particularly congested. As you might imagine, in these places where cars spend a lot of time standing still, air is not the cleanest, but Nexo apparently can deal with that quite nicely – not only it does not pollute, but it also leaves air cleaner than it found. Fuel-cell needs to components in order to produce energy – hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen tanks have to be filled up in specialized stations, but oxygen simply comes from the atmosphere. Air firstly passes through Nexo’s advanced air filter where 97% of ultrafine particulates get stuck. These include Sulphur dioxide and Nitrous dioxide, which are particularly harmful for people. However that is not enough. Then air comes to the humidifier in stage two, where a lot of particles are left on the surface. Finally, air comes to the Gas Diffusion Layer within the fuel cell stack. It is made from carbon fibre paper with a microspore structure, which further filters the air. The result is extremely clean air, which has over 99.9% of ultra-fine particles and toxic gases filtered out. During 31 days and 350 km travelled Nexo cleaned out 900 kg of air. It is difficult to imagine how much that is, but one adult needs that much air in 60 days. 1,455 adults breathe 900 kg of air in one hour. Hyundai believes that such technologies as Nexo can bring the future of zero emissions one step closer.
In 31 days Nexo cleaned 900 kg of air, which is about 60 days-worth of air for 1 adult. Credit: Hyundai But hydrogen-powered cars can offer even more than that. Unlike battery-powered electric cars, these fuel cell vehicles can be filled up in 5 minutes. They can also be used as a source of clean energy in case of an emergency if the power is out. Hyundai Nexo also features regenerative braking, which allows saving hydrogen and extends range, but it also improves the longevity of the brake pads and disks, while simultaneously preventing unnecessary discharge of brake dust.
(DWK)
