So, is the nanoFlowcell QUANTiNO a hydrogen fuel cell car or not? This may be a tough call. The vehicle doesn’t use a traditional hydrogen fuel cell with compressed H2 gas and oxygen from the air flowing over the polymer exchange membrane (PEM).
Instead the nanoFlowcell uses an ionic liquid catalyst in two 175-liter tanks and the liquid flows over a fuel cell to create electricity.
According to NanoFlowCell AG, “With its two 175-litre tanks, the QUANTiNO is able to carry 350 litres of ionic liquid in total – one tank with a positive charge and one with a negative charge. The refuelling process is similar to the procedure which is customary today, the sole difference being that two tanks are filled simultaneously, each with a different fluid.”
They go onto say, “As an alternative drive system, the nanoFlowcell® is operated with an ionic liquid. “Instead of using hydrogen and oxygen as in a conventional fuel cell, we work with two ionic fluids – one with a positive charge and one with a negative charge,” explains Nunzio La Vecchia.”
The NanoFlowcell QUANTiNO has a range of over 600 miles and generates around 136hp. The QUANTiNO is definitely some sort of electric vehicle and some sort of fuel cell vehicle. One can argue that it is a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle since it uses a liquid hydrogen carrier which transports both positive ions and negative ions through the fuel cell device in order to create electricity. It can also be argued that this is more of a battery electric vehicle with the ionized water replacing other lithium-type batteries.
One can also argue that this is a new class of vehicle that is neither battery-electric, nor hydrogen fuel cell. I’ll let you make the call on this one.
External References
http://mediacenter.nanoflowcell.com/mediacenter/press-release/