Hydrogen (Waterstof) is the lightest of the chemical elements and has the simplest atomic structure. It is by far the commonest element in the universe (mainly on the Sun, stars and Jupiter), although not on the earth, where it only occurs as produced and combined with oxygen as water. Let’s talk about Hydrogen FCEV, the road to an emission free transported World, let’s start small and humble with the Netherlands.
In the coming two years the amount of Hydrogen stations in the Netherlands will be expanded from 2 to 16, and more than 20 in 2020. The Hague will offer one of those 16 fuel stations in the beginning 0f 2017, and will do production of Hydrogen in close vicinity, resulting in close to no loss in efficiency. With this they set the stage for further research to export to the World using its international network of universities and organizations.
The ministry of Infrastructure and Environment (M&I) in The Hague is the founding father of the Nationaal Waterstof Platform (Dutch National Hydrogen platform). Together with more than 50 companies and organisations they aim for 2020 to have about two thousand cars, a hundred buses and twenty trucks driving around on hydrogen in our country. These are almost all the members:
To be clear, this is not about vehicles that ‘burn’ hydrogen in a combustion engine, this is not efficient to be competitive with a fossil fuel engine or electric car. We talk about a Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEV). A Hydrogen Fuel Cell powers an electric motor ‘replacing’ the battery in an electric vehicle (EV) like your ‘ordinary’ plug-in Tesla, Nissan Leaf or BMW i-serie.
A Hydrogen FCEV has all the benefits and trades of an electric vehicle, and replaces the battery with Hydrogen storage plus ‘engine’: a Fuel Cell.
Because of the current battery technology, a Hydrogen FCEV has a range of up to three times a plug-in battery EV, and ‘refuels’ 120 times faster (in 3 minutes). Hydrogen fuel has a much denser energy than gasoline. Just over 5 kilos of hydrogen deliver a 450+ kilometers range for a full-sized sedan, about twice the output of an equivalent amount of gasoline!
What is Hydrogen exactly and how can it be leveraged?
Hydrogen (H2) is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, and non-poisonous. Hydrogen is about 57 times lighter than gasoline vapor and 14 times lighter than air. This means that if it is released in an open environment, it will typically rise and disperse rapidly. This is a safety advantage in an outside environment over natural gas for example.
Hydrogen is almost not in pure form in the Earth’s nature. However, hydrogen is naturally found in a diverse range of compounds, water is the best known. To make the hydrogen therefrom energy is needed. It is therefore only sustainable if the energy with which we make hydrogen from a renewable source such as wind, solar or hydro power is derived.
Hydrogen is just as clean as the energy used to produce it
Hydrogen can be made by electrolysis which is 90% efficient, organic by using specific microorganisms or in nuclear power plants, through photosynthesis (conversion using light). Hydrogen as fuel is only sustainable if it is made with renewable energy, an advantage here is that lots of sustainable energy is produced when it’s not directly needed. To prevent loss, we should create and store it when there’s large-scale excess (more producing than using) of energy. With solar that’s at day time, with wind when it’s windy and hydro almost always…
Hydrogen was the primary gas (although burned) used in the world’s gaslights for centuries, long before electric lights, and they used it in rocket boosting the space shuttle to the moon as well.
Hydrogen has a high energy content by weight, but not by volume, which is a particular challenge for storage. In order to store sufficient quantities of hydrogen gas, it’s compressed and stored at high pressures. For safety, hydrogen tanks are equipped with pressure relief devices that will prevent the pressures in the tanks from becoming too high. Every crash test found the fuel cell structure and tanks were stronger than the steel structures covering them. The steel failed before the tanks did.
The closer we get from production to tankstation, the better. In The Hague we will produce it on site, next to the Hydrogen Fuel station that it can be transported through a pipe, directly to storage.
Using Hydrogen Fuel Cells, not combustion engines
Combustion engines have a very low efficiency: only 15 percent to 25 percent of the input energy provides movement, the rest is ‘lost’. Another disadvantage of an internal combustion engine with hydrogen as a fuel is the formation of NOx, which is harmful to the environment.
The other, and sustainable way to make use of Hydrogen as an energy carrier is directly producing electricity, for example, in order to drive electric motors. This is done by means of a fuel cell, that’s why this article is limited to this Hydrogen FCEV technology.
Fuel cells, which have provided spacecrafts with power since the 1960’s, and invented in 1839 to produce electricity by reacting hydrogen with air, enables longer travel than battery-driven vehicles while emitting only water vapor rather than NOx or carbon dioxide.
Fuel Cells enable longer electric travel than battery driven vehicles.
When compressed hydrogen is very dense and easy to transport. Hydrogen fuel cells are already being used as stationary generators instead of battery and gas powered generators. This works because it’s simply far more efficient and thus cheaper, and fortunately more sustainable for the environment.
Which problems can hydrogen fuel cells solve?
It’s clear and inevitable we need to step away from burning fossil fuels to get us from A to B. The road to electric mobility is paved with challenges, and one of them is storage. Here’s where Hydrogen fuel cell can come useful. The problem with electric vehicles are the expensive Lithion-Ion batteries needed to power the complete journey, as charging time is high.
Producing Lithium-Ion batteries is costly because of the rare materials it uses, and this creates another dependance of the material producing countries (and companies), with Australia, Chile and China as its biggest miners. Although creating fuel cell technology uses rare materials as well, it’s certainly less dependant on one element.
Fuell Cells make the World less dependent on Lithium
Next to the high cost of creating batteries, these are currently not suitable for public transportation busses and trucks, where Hydrogen FCEV are a solid option to provide the range combined with power. Mercedes proves this by offering dozens of pilots in cities around the world.
Hydrogen fuel can be made from many sources, including wind, solar and even garbage. Excess solar and wind energy that would normally be lost on the grid, can be used to create and store hydrogen fuel.
Excess produced sustainable energy can be easily turned into Hydrogen FCEV fuel, removing the loss on the grid
All Scandinavian countries have an excess of wind and hydro energy and that’s why they embrace the creation of useful Hydrogen fuel support with a partnership.
What’s happening in the Hague in Hydrogen FCEV realm
The first production plus fuel station in the World will be in The Hague. Norway is also developing an on site production and fueling facility, let’s see which one is earlier in operation. On site production means there’s almost no loss of energy from where it’s produced, stored, transferred to a vehicle and eventually used for momentum.
In 2011 there were already a group of students from TU Delft presenting a Hydrogen FCEV racecar, further developments are being researched in close collaboration with the European Union and the local universities.
The Dutch government believes in multiple ways of providing sustainable transportation, and with Battery EV they’re are relatively far considering the rest of the world. With offering incentives and pushing the infrastructure with companies they make this form of transportation more attractive. With Fuel Cell technology they are just scratching the surface, and with the Nationaal Waterstof Platform, here in the Hague they are pushing it forward.
How to make Hydrogen FCEV practically sustainable
Almost 2% of global demand could be covered by energy using hydrogen that is now simply vented through sustainable energy being wasted because it’s not immediately used; which actually makes the hydrogen fuel ‘freely available’.
Technically, carmakers are ready to put fuel-cell cars on the road, but so far it remains too expensive because there is not acceptance. Making fuel-cell technology a reality is a task not just for carmakers, but for the whole of society. The well known chicken and egg problem is at play here. Without infrastructure no car production, and the other way around.
The infrastructure and market conditions are expected to be on an appropriate level to allow mass vehicle production by 2017.
A fuel cell is required to last 5,000 hours or 150,000 miles before needing to be replaced. This is already quite effective, and if well developed on a large scale with multiple manufacturers, the technology can still be increasingly improved.
Hydrogen FCEV fleet production is on the rise
In terms of car production, Daimler (Mercedes and Smart) is a front runner with a diverse set of FCEV and EV vehicles, with Toyota and Honda the only manufacturers with a dedicated FCEV car, for example the Mirai (future in Japanese). Hyuandai, Ford and Nissan are well on their way to make their own dedicated fit models for 2017.
Daimler has 20 years of experience with Hydrogen FCEV (mostly cars and busses) already, and is now in partnership with Nissan and Ford to expand the technology far and wide. If you want to read more on how Mercedes approaches electrical transportation, check out their recent presentation by one of its chiefs of sustainable transport.
The worldwide hydrogen infrastructure is strongly improving
In The Hague we can get our Hydrogen shot in the beginning of 2017, the first in the world with an on site production facility. You can get it at multiple points in the Netherlands already. Below is how the coverage looks and will look in the Netherlands, and remember you can drive more than 450 kilometers on a single fuel tank.
- Worldwide they are around 700 Hydrogen Fuel stations, according to H2stations.org
- By 2016 there are around 40 Hydrogen stations in California, United States.
- Germany went from 15 current stations to 50 stations in 2015, and 100 by 2020.
- Japan is targeting an increase from 17 stations to more than 100 by 2016, with major government support.
- Korea has a goal of more than 160 stations by 2020.
- The UK have made 15 stations in 2015, with a target of 65 by 2020.
- Denmark is committed to 15 new stations by 2020 as part of their national renewable network program using their excess wind energy.
Fuel cell (FCEV) versus battery electric (EV) mobility
The world is strongly and fortunately pivoting to electric vehicle (EV) transportation at the moment, with the expressive successes of Tesla with more than 400k pre orders for 2018. Although the world is still strongly focused to buy (especially developing countries) -and rely on- fossil fuel mobility in trucks, busses, cars and scooters.
In the transition phase, many of the rare metals to make batteries (lithium-Ion) are in the hands of companies (many Chinese). So we create a new dependency in resources.
Also, studies show there are not enough available rare metals in order to produce the huge amount of batteries. If we want to preserve the global fleet of vehicles in the coming decades, and with that power even our homes and offices, if we have to take Elon Musk’s word for it.
Here are the strengths and challenges from both groups:
Electric vehicles with fuel cells (FCEV)
+ Strengths
- Short refueling time and high range, as comparable to fossil fuel cars
- Fuel cell drivetrain useable for car and truck applications, making it usable in all (let’s stick to ground) vehicles
/ Challenges
- High cost of rare metals needed for the technology
- Relatively inexpensive because of long-lasting fuel cells
- Supply of carbon-free hydrogen
- A nationwide refueling system, in partnership with governments and companies
Electric vehicles with batteries (EV)
+ Strengths
- Highest energy efficiency and lowest greenhouse gas emissions of all drivetrains
- Acceptance is big with Nissan, Tesla, and growing in motorcycle domain (e.g. Zero and Energica) meaning a wide choice in different vehicles
- Charging widely available on the grid and in cities
/ Challenges
- High charging time, making it incompetent for long range
- To create inexpensive and long-lasting batteries
- Supply of carbon-free electricity
- A nationwide fast charging system is needed to ease long travel
- The efficiency of getting it in the battery of the vehicle over the grid. The loss of the net is 10%, and AC to DC is also 10%, and back from DC to AC, to the drivetrain.
You can safely say for future emission-free mobility, both drivetrain technologies will be needed! Because they both show clear benefits and have their challenges.
One more thing to mention about Hydrogen FCEV
The “power out” port on the Toyota Mirai is optional, but with this it becomes a mobile electric generator. The Mirai can power the average home for up to a week with both onboard hydrogen tanks filled. Not a bad option to consider when you order your new car and live in a storm prone area. Or if you want to live of the grid to complement your solar panels and wind energy.
How you can contribute to our emission free future
Before we start filling our fossil fuels tanks with Hydrogen, or start converting our engines with Fuel Cells, consider that there are finally more options, more attractive options in terms of costs and the environment. What if the cities we live in, and the nature we drive through are not affected by our CO2 spurring machines and can move safely, economically and comfortably from A to B?
Read more on Hydrogen and its properties
- https://h2tools.org/bestpractices/h2properties
- http://yourenergy.nl/read/waterstof
- http://content.publicatiereeksgevaarlijkestoffen.nl/documents/PGS35/PGS35-2015-v1.0-waterstof.pdf
More to research on Hydrogen FCEV
- Visit the Hydrogen FCEV conference in the Hague August 25 2016
- Read this scientific paper
More to research on electric transporation (EV)
- More (slightly biased) stories on the shift to electric transporation by Elon Musk and his ventures
- https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/wells-to-wheels-electric-car-efficiency/
The post Hydrogen FCEV, 9 things you should know on Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles appeared first on Impact City The Hague Innovators.