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Stephen Harris
Senior reporter
The pathway to hydrogen cars
At the start of the Olympics, a story appeared in some news sources sneering at the fact that London’s new hydrogen-fuelled taxis had to be transported to Swindon to be refuelled, negating any carbon saving they provided. While admittedly something of a PR blunder, this wasn’t quite the failure of planning and technology that those who wrote the articles tried to portray it as: the London refuelling station was merely a day late in opening and the taxis had already been booked to carry VIPs across the capital.
When it comes to hydrogen and other low-carbon energy alternatives, it’s common to hear sceptical scoffing like this. ‘It’ll never be cost-effective,’ the naysayers exclaimed. ‘It’s not made with renewable energy so what’s the point?’ Of course, these are issues that have to be addressed if hydrogen is to become a viable way of cutting CO2 emissions. But getting to that point requires intermediate steps. It requires companies willing to invest for the long term and to develop production and distribution systems that minimise losses and can pave the way for genuinely green hydrogen.
‘We’re using brown hydrogen [from non-renewable sources] to demonstrate the technology and to improve the infrastructure,’ said Diana Raine, European business manager for hydrogen at Air Products, the company that supplies the gas for the London taxis. ‘When the market is there, then we’ll invest in green hydrogen but we can only do that if the pathway to green production is there.
‘We want to prove the technology at the lowest possible cost. The London refuelling station uses brown hydrogen, which provides a 50 per cent CO2 reduction compared with existing taxis. But we’ve made a commitment up front with Transport for London to improve the existing production line and eventually go green.’
According to rough market projections made by sustainable energy consultancy E4tech, there could be 1.5 million hydrogen cars on the road globally by 2020 and 35m by 2030. How will this happen when battery and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (EVs) are already starting to creep into the market? E4tech director David Hart, who is also a principal research fellow at Imperial College London, argues that hydrogen will target a section of the market that EVs can’t reach.
‘A pure EV makes sense for a limited range where you have the capability to recharge slowly because it’s the most efficient way of converting renewable electricity into transport fuel.’ But for people who consistently travel long distances, a hydrogen vehicle would be much more suitable because it doesn’t need filling up as often and that process, at around three minutes, is much quicker than recharging a battery.
A recent EU study found that, based on current driving patterns, battery-powered EVs would only be able to replace 50 per cent of cars in Europe. This represents only 25 per cent of vehicle emissions because larger cars used more for long journeys produce far more CO2.
Add to this the developing markets for public transport, forklift trucks in warehouses, low-carbon generators for back-up supplies and remote operations such as mobile phone masts and even internal power systems for submarines, and the reasons for (eventually) investing in green hydrogen production become even stronger. There’s also the prospect of energy storage — an undeveloped sector but one that will be vital for managing the intermittency of renewable electricity generation.
Although genuinely green hydrogen isn’t yet widely available, industrial gas companies do have potential solutions in the pipeline. Already in the process of replacing production facilities with more efficient designs to cut CO2 emissions by up to 20 per cent at each one, Air Products is also developing plants that use waste gas as their feedstock.
Following the opening of a biogas-fuelled power, heat and hydrogen facility in California, the company is preparing for a 2014 opening of the Tees Valley Renewable Energy Plant, which will gasify landfill waste to produce syngas for electricity generation. The company then intends to modify this design for another UK plant outputting hydrogen.
Of course, hydrogen has its disadvantages. Refuelling facilities tend to take up a lot of space and use energy to keep the fuel compressed or liquefied. There are regulatory barriers because current standards are based on industrial usage. It’s also difficult to meter and you can’t add an odorant as is done with methane without making it unsuitable for fuel-cell use.
Hydrogen transport is one of those technologies that’s always referred to as being just a few years away — and has been for 20 years. But with several major manufacturers, including Toyota and Daimler, announcing their intentions to make hydrogen cars commercially available by 2015, it seems that this forecast may finally have become accurate.
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Readers' comments (33)
20 Cent | 21 Sep 2012 1:51 pm
I hope it doesn't happen, but the first accident in one of these machines resulting in an explosion will set them back years. They are bombs on wheels.
Any compressed gas is a potential hazard and should carry a warning sign similar to trucks.
Hydrogen has the added danger of slow seepage through the walls of the fuel tank, which is another hazard if the vehicle is left in a garage for a length of time.
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Ed Burrows | 21 Sep 2012 1:53 pm
Think of hydrogen as petrol/diesel/CNG/LPG/biofuel without the carbon component. It works in conventional internal combustion engines (and eliminates the need for emissions reduction systems). Back to carburettors, if you like. A hydrogen economy would remove the need for the world's auto industry to retool. And hydrogen could be produced efficiently by thorium nuclear power stations. The downside is that a hydrogen fuelled IC engine produces water vapour at the tailpipe -- not good with icy roads in winder. But, where there's a will there's a way.
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Anonymous | 21 Sep 2012 1:58 pm
@StephenHarris have you come across ITM Power? From what I understand, their units generate hydrogen on site and have been doing so reliably already (see the links on the far right of this page - http://www.itm-power.com/product/hfuel/). It uses tap water and electricity for inputs, and has been designed for use with an intermittent power source, so if you have access to renewables, you can have green hydrogen now.
As to the cost aspects of it, they have already reported that they can generate hydrogen at below the target set by the EU for 2015 (though there are some caveats to this, see official announcement for those - http://www.itm-power.com/news-item/update-on-hydrogen-cost-structure/)
Seems to me that being able to generate the hydrogen cleanly on demand and on site is a much more elegant solution than having it centrally produced and then transported to filling stations.
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Bob Smith | 21 Sep 2012 2:00 pm
Why don't you research HHO/Brown's Gas systems? You can put this on your car TODAY - have a look at www.palefuelsystems.co.uk
I saw one installed on a Jense last week in Leeds - went from 14mpg to 18mpg!! I'll be getting one installed soon to an audi a6. Cost just over a grand and payback under 6 months. AND it's not storing hydrogen but producing it on demand
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kirby Mohr | 21 Sep 2012 2:17 pm
The worst thing about using pressurized hydrogen is that it has a negative Joule-Thompson coefficient. This means that as it expands it heats up. If the hydrogen is under substantial pressure, any small leak of hydrogen will heat up enough to set itself on fire. Also, the resulting flame jet is almost colorless and difficult to see unless it hits something. I have fought many of these fires at a refinery in know this to be fact.
Unless they have somehow already overcome this problem, this strikes me as being a particularly dangerous alternative to more conventional systems. Compressed natural gas is a much better choice.
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Anonymous | 21 Sep 2012 2:26 pm
All cars already produce water vapour at the tail pipe so that is hardly a valid objection. As for worrying about slow seepage of H2 from you fuel tank, don't, it will escape far quicker from your garage than it could ever build up.
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Alan Dixon | 21 Sep 2012 2:47 pm
Hydrogen IS the way forawrd, provided it can be generated cleanly and efficiently. Why not, in place of massive wind-farms offshore, have a barrage of generators producing hydrogen by electrolysis of sea-water -pumped/cooled into barges and then towed ashore for storage/distribution?
Little or no change to the existing oil-based transport energy structure, and absolutely green.
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Anonymous | 21 Sep 2012 2:54 pm
If hydrogen is stored as a hydride or in a carbon nanotube matrix, it won't be dangerous. Additionally, we won't need the catalyst industry and all the energy needed to refine the precious metals in them. As long as the performance and the filling network becomes availabe eventually, there should be acceptance. Don't forget that we used to buy petrol from pharmacies.
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randydutton | 21 Sep 2012 6:07 pm
Not mentioned:
Hydrogen, when released into the atmosphere combines with hydroxyls that otherwise would scrub CH4 from the air. And methane is 28X worse than CO2 as a GWG.
Why not consider using H-O-O instead of straight hydrogen? You'd get higher heat and efficiency.
Why not use offshore wind turbines to create hydrogen from water, store it offshore, and have tankers periodically transport it. That would eliminate grid upgrading and overcapacity problems.
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randydutton | 21 Sep 2012 6:10 pm
EV problem:
Not discussed is that many of the advanced batteries require rare earth elements (REE) 97% monopolized by China. The manner in which China mines and refines REEs is extremely toxic to the environment, thus, you're shifting from CO2 emissions to more radioactive thorium emissions.
And using a limited REE supply for EVs means less REE for other perhaps more valuable equipment.
Journalists should consider the whole issue, not just a selective part.
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Editor's comments | 21 Sep 2012 6:10 pm
A valid point. The question is, as with nuclear power, whether we need to accept a different environmentally damaging solution if it's the only realistic way of heading off the pressing issue of cutting CO2 emissions and tackling climate change.
Anonymous | 21 Sep 2012 7:59 pm
The testing that takes place on hydrogen tanks is rigorous and robust. Bullets and bonfires are involved! The safety cases when putting them into a vehicle are onerous to the point of paranoia too. I've often wondered what would happen if a petrol tank was subject to the same regime.
Some test have been done on petrol vs hydrogen and these are food for thought................
http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=482
Perhaps we should worry a bit more about petrol.............
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Max Lunn | 22 Sep 2012 8:10 am
LPG has been successful as an alternative to petrol and is an additive to diesel systems. As a major fuel it has not caught on as it has only ever been used to make existing cars run for less. Hydrogen has to be the cleanest fuel for the future, it needs manufacturers to make it the fuel of choice, this will ensure that the fuel tank is safely installed in the body shell with cut off valves and the like. Do not forget that modern cars are amazingly safe compared with 20 yrs ago. we should embrace the move to hydrogen and encourage British manufacturers to lead the way.
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John Kelly | 22 Sep 2012 9:26 am
Some 25-30 years ago at British Rail Research I did a cursary investigation of using hydrogen fuelled diesel engines with a hydride storage system - technical discussions with AEA were very encouraging. However, the BR 'long grass' got in the way.
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CG | 22 Sep 2012 10:20 am
Have a look at this site:
www.jouleunlimited.com
Does fuel production get any greener?
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Editor's comments | 22 Sep 2012 10:20 am
See here for our recent report on the topic of producing fuel from CO2 and renewable energy http://www.theengineer.co.uk/sectors/energy-and-environment/in-depth/chemical-potential-turning-carbon-dioxide-into-fuel/1013459.article
Mike Thurgood | 22 Sep 2012 3:59 pm
The hydrogen economy is surely the only way to go, eventually, if carbon dioxide emissions are going to be drastically reduced. With energy-economic methods for producing hydrogen, the cost viability should not be a problem. The idea of exchanging a compressed gas cylinder of hydrogen at a garage would seem, at face value, to be the sensible way to go. Certainly where bottle exchange is concerned.
I get the point that certain safety aspects may need to be dealt with. But hydrogen is used in industry on a large scale, and one rarely hears anything about hydrogen explosions.
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Kevin Cudby | 23 Sep 2012 9:37 am
Having thoroughly analysed all the options I concluded that hydrogen will probably be confined to commercial applications such as buses. I ran several CNG cars in the 1970s and '80s. I got heartily sick of stopping for gas every two or three days. Hydrogen cars will be slightly better, but still damned annoying. And although I don't think the safety issues should be over-hyped, I do think they'll be a lot easier to manage in the controlled environment of a fleet operation. It's not easy to fight an invisible fire, for example. You need specialist expertise.
We already know how oil companies will make climate-neutral crude oil in the future. They won't do it until the humanity imposes a limit on cumulative fossil carbon emissions (which is the only scientifically proven way to limit human-made warming).
I think hydrogen will have its place. I'm inclined to think it will be a niche fuel, rather than a mainstream fuel.
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avinash | 24 Sep 2012 3:49 am
At what pressure Hydrogen is stored and how they compress it ..which technology ??
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Editor's comments | 24 Sep 2012 3:49 am
Vehicle fuel hydrogen is typically transported at 200 bar, then compressed at the fuelling station to either 400 or 900 bar and dispensed at 700 bar. New high-pressure trailers are being developed that will see the hydrogen part-compressed centrally and then transported at around 500 bar to reduce the compression needed at the fuelling station and increase the amount that can be transported.
BENEDICT DAVEY | 24 Sep 2012 11:42 pm
Could Samarium Cobalt Piezotransformers generate electricty ...for vehicles or properties ... by stimulating crystals to produce powerful fluctuating magnetic flux to generate emfs instead of primary inductance coils? Obviously one could play about with coil alloys and core compositions.. and piezocrystal ingredients.. to generate the required output with 0.1% of the usual input?
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JohnK | 25 Sep 2012 3:39 pm
To respond to various points and to 'Ed's' comment. 700 bar is 10,500psi (c.5 tons per square inch!). What gas is contained in the pressure vessel is irrelevant, the pressure alone makes this a lethal bomb in any road vehicle. Until Hydrogen can be stored and released at ambient temperature and in liquid equivalent density, then the future for Hydrogen powered road vehicles seem uncertain to me.
Benedict Davey - Perpetual motion? Good luck with that.
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Anonymous | 25 Sep 2012 3:41 pm
The editor's correct, hydrogen tube trailers currently transport gaseous hydrogen at 200 Bar. A fully laden articulated lorry carries a cargo of about 200 kg (based on the US DOT/ADR approved ones we had).
If the tractor has got long range fuel tanks there's probably more oomph in the diesel he's carrying.
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