Car and Energy Sectors Actually Move toward Early Stage Market of FCVs in Japan

The Japanese FCV industries, including car and energy, take a large step toward the early stage market of FCVs in 2015.

Recently, in Japan, three big automakers and ten energy companies issued a joint statement declaring that the companies make active efforts to build the infrastructure for supplying hydrogen gas to fuel cell vehicles (FCV), which will enter the early market stage in around 2015. About 100 hydrogen stations will be built in the major metropolitan cities of Tokyo, Aichi, Osaka and Fukuoka.

The FCV driving demonstration test using FCV buses has started from the middle of December last year. The FCV buses regularly run on the routes, including the highway, between Haneda airport and two locations in Tokyo. The demonstration test using the hired-car will be conducted before long. The hired-car runs on the highway between Narita airport and the center of Tokyo.

The way for the hydrogen station to obtain hydrogen gas is different between 1) the hydrogen station coupled to the bus route and 2) that coupled to the hired-car route.
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Another micro SOFC operating at 450 Celsius degree or lower

A micro-tubular SOFC, co-developed by AIST and Prof. Nigel Sammes, Colorado School of Mines.
It is capable of generating electric power by directly reforming any of various kinds of hydrocarbon fuels into hydrogen fuel even at 450 Celsius degree or lower.
A ceria layer of nanometer-size (reforming catalyst) is formed on the inner wall of the tube.
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SOFC and PEFC, their Operating Temperatures Go toward Intermediate Temperatures

In the PEFC and SOFC fields, it seems that much development efforts are directed to the technologies to stably operate those types of the fuel cells at the intermediate temperatures in practical levels.

The fuel cell that Nordic Power Systems uses operates at temperatures higher than 100 Celsius degree, the limit operating temperature of the PEFC.
SiEnergy Systems, LLC (USA) has fabricated a prototype of the micro-SOFC, which operates at 300 Celsius degree.
[Copyright by FuelCell japan]
In connection with this, the lab team led by Prof. Yuichi Shimakawa (Kyoto University) discovered the fact that the oxygen ions anisotropically diffuse in the solid oxide at 300 Celsius degree or lower. The discovery shows that the perovskite-structure oxide exhibits the oxygen ion conductivity in the intermediate temperature region. The discovery is a big discovery when considering the current development trend to operate the fuel cells at the intermediate temperatures. The news on the discovery was released at about this time of the last year. I have carelessly forgotten to refer to the discovery news in my related articles although I wanted to do so. The technical paper describing the discovery was posted to the journal Nature Chemistry and was published on its online version.
SiEnergy: http://www.alliedminds.com/Portfolio/SiEnergy_Systems/index.htm
Nature Chemistry：
http://www.ehcc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/eh10/index.php?plugin=attach&refer=%E8%AB%96%E6%96%87/Publications&openfile=133_NatureChemistry_SrFeO2film.pd
My site：http://www.fcpat-japan.com/SiEnergy.htm