General Motors, the Office of Naval Research and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory announce Thursday, June 23, 2016, they are cooperating to incorporate automotive hydrogen fuel cell systems into a next-generation of Navy unmanned undersea vehicles, or UUVs. Hydrogen fuel cells convert high-energy hydrogen efficiently into electricity, resulting in vehicles with greater range and endurance than those powered with batteries. (Office of Naval Research File Photo) (credit: Office of Naval Research File Photo)
On Thursday, Detroit automaker General Motors and the US Navy announced a partnership in which the Navy would be able to take advantage of hydrogen fuel cell research from GM to develop a long-endurance unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV).
According to Karen Swider-Lyons, the head of the Naval Research Laboratory’s (NRL) Chemistry Division of its Alternative Energy Section, the Navy is looking for “weeks if not months of endurance” from a UUV. She stressed that research and testing is still in early stages, and that the Navy had not yet pinpointed a single application it wanted to apply fuel-cell powered underwater drones to. “As the technology becomes available we’ll see,” Swider-Lyons said on a conference call this morning. “You can look at the history of unmanned air vehicles and guess.”
Fuel cell technology has been lauded as a potentially revolutionary energy source for zero-emissions vehicles, using hydrogen to create electricity and emitting H2O as waste. While fuel-cells are more energy dense than batteries, batteries have generally won out when it comes to building zero-emissions cars because hydrogen refueling centers are scarce and storing hydrogen itself can require a high-pressure container or very cold temperatures.
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Source: Ars Technica – GM shares fuel cell research to US Navy to develop unmanned undersea vehicles