Issue 3 - March 2023 15
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The Viability of Hydrogen Fuel Cells in Formula One By Rohana Saunders (Lower Sixth, Queen Anne)
If you are anything like me than you are a petrol head. And when it comes to the motor world nothing beats Formula One. This alluring sport truly encapsulates speed, technology and most of all luxury. However, with today’s climate crisis the future of the F1 world needs some serious reformation. Hence the question comes to mind. Can hydrogen, the worlds new emerging CO2 neutral fuel, become the new power source of Formula One? Firstly, I had to make some comparative calculations to determine how much hydrogen fuel would be required to deliver the same energy output as the same volume of fuel an F1 car carries per race. By using some plastic box dimensions, I found on Ikea, and a blueprint of a Formula One fuel tank I was able to determine each car could hold 110kg of Formula One fuel which (upon undergoing complete combustion) would produce roughly 500,000KJ of energy. Next, I determined the energy produced via the formation of H2O. By calculating the moles of water produced from 110kg of hydrogen fuel and multiplying it by the energy produced from the bond formation of 1 mol of H2O I realised 15720000 KJ would be produced. Roughly 31 times more energy. In theory this sounds like a great fix, right? Because in fact only 35.5kg of hydrogen would be required to give the same energy output. Lighter fuel, lighter cars more speed on track. Perfect right? The main issue arises when one compares the space 35.5kg of hydrogen fuel in standard conditions would take up compared to the original 110kg of petroleum + ethanol fuel. After dividing my calculations a few times, I determined you would have to refuel the car more than 3x in order to complete a full race. This isn’t completely unheard of, in the earlier days of the sport the pit crew of each car would have had to make routine stops to refuel the vehicles. However, this comes with a multitude of its own dangers with there being countless examples of when these refuels would result in the whole car and pit crew catching on fire. With hydrogen being an even more flammable fuel, the results would be catastrophic. Additionally, each hydrogen refuel would need to take around 4-5 minutes. This conclusion would completely diminish the fast-paced nature of the sport or would require a completely new and bigger car. I instead investigated compressing the hydrogen as a gas to avoid refuelling. Using the ideal gas equation, (PV=NRT) I wanted to determine the value for pressure. I modelled the temperature from the extremely hot breaks and cockpit plus the average UK temperature. Volume was the space in the fuel tank in m3. N equalled the number of moles in 32.5kg of hydrogen and R was the gas constant (8.31 mol−1K−1). After plugging that into a calculator I determined a pressure of 2083 atmospheres would be required to hold this gas. The material required to hold this pressure simply does not exist! Even if if you managed to find one the car would essentially be a bomb on wheels. Printed on recycled paper
Design and Layout: Mr N Brownless