[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Beery1', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'P')resident Obama claims the recent large increases in NG reserves found with frakking are sufficient to supply the US for 100 years.

[lper100km]

There would not be a hydrogen vehicle were it not for fossil fuels.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lper100km', '
')There would not be a hydrogen vehicle were it not for fossil fuels.

[Graeme]

Plant, If natural gas can be converted to hydrogen, then maybe then this process will be environmentally beneficial as well as providing fuel for new generation of vehicles.

Toyota plan to make hydrogen cars in Melbourne, creating hundreds of jobs

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')oyota plan to make hydrogen cars in Melbourne, creating hundreds of jobs.

The hi-tech switch would also require a new hydrogen-capturing plant to be built in Gippsland, providing hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars worth of investment for the region, which has one of the state's highest unemployment rates.

Toyota Australia president Max Yasuda said Victoria was ideally placed to take advantage of the new technology, which would roll out in Japan and the US in 2015.

"One of the strengths of this country, especially in Victoria, is that you have an abundant resource of brown coal. This coal cannot be transported," Mr Yasuda said.

"One of the ways we utilise this coal is to build a plant to produce hydrogen. So that means we have an abundance of hydrogen energy here in Victoria."

He said Toyota Australia was trying to get trial cars here by 2015, with a view to mass production if there was sufficient consumer demand.

It comes as Toyota is launching a new $330 million hybrid and petrol engine plant in Altona this morning, which will secure the company's future in Victoria for the next 10 years.

[Graeme]

Ultrathin Layers of Platinum Could Help Make Hydrogen Cars Affordable

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')ne potential use for the abundance of natural gas discovered in shale deposits across the United States—and potentially in other countries around the world—could be producing hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles.

But such fuel cells remain expensive, in part because they use the precious metal platinum to facilitate the chemical reactions that produce electricity within the cell. A new method for quickly and cheaply depositing ultrathin layers of platinum, described today in the journal Science, might make it practical to reduce the amount of platinum used in fuel cells, thereby lowering the cost of fuel cells significantly.


Moffat and colleagues at the National Institute of Science and Technology showed that platinum dissolved in a solution can be deposited on a gold surface in one-atom thick layers by alternately applying a positive and negative voltage.

The negative voltage causes two things: first, an atom-thick layer of platinum forms; and second, once those atoms are in place, a layer of hydrogen forms, thus preventing any more platinum from accumulating. Switching to a positive voltage then burns off the hydrogen, preparing the surface to receive another atom-thick layer of platinum when the negative voltage is applied again. In this way, the researchers can quickly and easily build layers of any desired atomic thickness.

The technique is orders of magnitude faster than one common method: depositing ultrathin layers of materials by first vaporizing the material that will be deposited, says Jay Switzer, professor of chemistry at Missouri University of Science and Technology, who was not involved with the project. It’s also simpler than another technique, which involves first depositing copper, and then using chemical reactions to replace that copper with platinum, he says.

[Graeme]

Hydrogen-powered cars could be mainstream by 2015

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')sia-Pacific carmakers are set to commercialize fuel-cell technology within the next three years, with manufacturers like Honda, Toyota and Hyundai making advances on their FCEV (fuel cell electric vehicle) designs.

In terms of legitimizing the technology, the Asia Pacific region has for many years been at the vanguard of hydrogen- and fuel cell-powered vehicles, but even in Japan and South Korea where investment has been high and public support strong, the market for such vehicles has been limited to concept cars or to fuel cell electric cars that have been leased to fleet users in urban areas. But according to the latest research on the subject by Frost & Sullivan, since the beginning of the year, things have started changing fast.

Mr. Vijayendra Rao, Research Manager at Frost & Sullivan Automotive & Transportation Practice, Asia Pacific said "The OEMs are prepared for a 2015 commercialization of the FCEV market. Key Japanese auto OEMs such as Honda, Toyota and Nissan and South Korea's Hyundai//Kia are preparing their FCEV models for commercialization." As a result, the number of fuel cell vehicles in the two countries is expected to increase from 600 in 2011 to 58,100 in 2020.

Hydrogen fuel cell technology is regarded as key to reducing the effects of global warming while cutting dependence on fossil fuels. As well as being used to create the energy to power an electric engine in a fuel cell vehicle, hydrogen can also be used as a replacement fuel for traditional internal combustion engines. However, although both uses of the technology are proven and efficient, extracting and creating hydrogen is still a challenge, as is developing a network of refueling stations.

[Graeme]

Hyundai will begin mass production of hydrogen fuel cell cars this week

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')yundai today announced plans to begin mass production of hydrogen fuel cell cars, as part of an effort to spearhead the development of zero-emission vehicles. As Korea's Yonhap News Agency reports, Hyundai will begin producing hydrogen-powered versions of its Tucson ix SUV at its Usan plant in South Korea on Friday, in the hopes of selling 1,000 models across the world by 2015.

According to Hyundai, the hydrogen-based Tucson ix can run for about 370 miles before being refueled. It also presents obvious environmental benefits, emitting only water vapor as it converts hydrogen into electricity. If widely adopted, the technology could decrease reliance upon internal combustion engines, thereby lowering emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

[Aaron]

Wow...still doing this Graeme? I'll give you this... you're not a quitter

[Graeme]

Hi Aaron! Thanks for taking an interest in my posts on this subject. There is no question now that the major car companies are going to manufacture fuel- cell vehicles. Hyundai will be the first; others will follow. Initially, production will be small and I guess adoption too. It may take decades for widespread adoption. I think I can understand why the car companies are confident that they will sell these. It's partly because of climate change but also peak oil!

[lper100km]

There is a problem with just looking at a selected part of a whole system and ignoring the other parts.

Undoubtedly a hydrogen powered vehicle offers agreeable benefits, with hot water/steam being the sole exhaust product. However, hydrogen does not occur naturally in isolation and has to be manufactured. Natural gas is now the favoured feed stock for bulk generation and uses a process of steam reforming to generate hydrogen. Nominally, the amount of energy used in reforming has to be at least equal to if not more than the energy used in breaking out the hydrogen than it generates in recombining with oxygen to power an engine. Thus the process starts out with a negative EROEI. This however has never stopped anyone in the past from making a product if the ultimate cost is bearable. A major issue with reforming, or any process that extracts hydrogen from nat gas or FF is what to do with the CO2 that is generated as a by product. Whether CO2 comes from an industrial process or from a tailpipe is largely irrelevant. So while hydrogen vehicle supporters propound on the green aspect of the vehicles, they conveniently forget about the ungreen aspects of the processes that create the fuel.

Why bother to go through all the hassle, overall energy loss and doubtful economic benefits to produce a green fuel when it is both more energy efficient and economic to just burn the nat gas in the first place given that there are no overall environmental benefits?

[Graeme]

This thread was supposed to be about FCV. The other aspects like production and storage have also be mentioned briefly in this thread and elsewhere (e.g. energy technology news thread).

Producing hydrogen from natural gas is not the only method. There are a host of others. One I've seen recently is described in a Nature article where hydrogen can be derived from methanol. I know about the solar production of hydrogen. Here is another one:

Hydrogen production breakthrough

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he world's first 30 gallon-per-minute process using catalysts for producing hydrogen-for-fuel was recently demonstrated by Phillips Company. This demonstrated breakthrough in hydrogen production is the basis for the first Hydrogen Design Conference to focus on Hydrogen-for-fuel CC-HOD equipment design. The conference will be held Monday, April 8, 2013, in Millerton, Oklahoma.

An important characteristic of this new breakthrough is that it requires no external power input after the hydrogen-producing reaction is started, making possible, for the first time, the scale-up to high rates of hydrogen on demand (HOD) using water and scrap materials for fuel.

A growing number of equipment manufacturers are planning the commercialization of this new method for producing hydrogen fuel at high flow rates by extracting hydrogen from water, using scrap paper and scrap aluminum, two of the world's safest and lowest-cost industrial materials.

[lper100km]

Reforming nat gas certainly isn't the only way to create hydrogen. But it is the most likely to prevail given the magnitude of the available feedstock. Hydroelectrolysis demands similar power input though the process does not generate CO2, obviously. The oxygen produced is effectively consumed again when the hydrogen is converted back to water. Any increase in power generation, central or distributed, implies a corresponding increase in CO2 emissions. To generate power on the scale and power density required would eliminate solar. Either way it is a far stretch from being a sure thing since the full implementation of hydrogen fuelled vehicles would require an increase in gross power production at least equal to the power consumed by the entire automobile fleet. I think I would be safe in saying that not only is this not about to happen, it is not even remotely possible that it could happen. There's no free lunch. Conversion of energy from one form to another is always done at a loss. Any proposal featuring manufactured fuel is akin to trying to self elevate by pulling on ones bootstraps. Of course, one can play the nuclear trump card, but we know how that is going to end eventually.

I am hugely sceptical of these kind of power proposals but try to keep an open mind.

I also don't doubt that there will be a niche market for hydrogen fuelled vehicles within the current FFand gas regime, but whether it will ever expand to mainstream status is an unlikely occurrence IMO - basically because of the inability to develop a support infrastructure.

[Graeme]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')idespread use of hydrogen and fuel cells would play a substantial role in overcoming our nation’s key energy challenges, including significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption as well as improvements in air quality. A study by the National Academies has shown that by 2050, fuel cell electric vehicles could provide the largest reduction in emissions and oil consumption of any advanced vehicles. In addition, hydrogen and fuel cells provide a significant economic opportunity for the United States, with various studies projecting up to 900,000 new jobs in the U.S. by 2030– 2035. Growing interest and investment among leading world economies, such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea, underscores the global market potential for these technologies and the need for continued investment for industry to remain competitive.

[Graeme]

New deal confirms Volkswagen fuel cell car plans

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he secret is out: Volkswagen is committed to fuel cell vehicle technology.

The German carmaker, which earlier this week outlined its plans to achieve a 95g/km CO2 fleet in Europe by 2020 (see article), has now signed an agreement with Ballard Power Systems which will advance the development of fuel cells to be used in Volkswagen’s demonstration cars within its automotive research programme.

It’s a long term commitment from Volkswagen too – set to last four years with the option for a two-year extension, and with a value ranging from C$60-$100million.

Ballard will design and manufacture fuel cells to be used in the Volkswagen HyMotion demonstration cars (logo, pictured) with its engineers to lead the way in critical areas of fuel cell product design such as plate and stack components and membrane electrode assembly.

According to John Sheridan, the president and CEO of Ballard, the research agreement represents a major step forward for the company both financially and strategically.

“The announcement… represents a tremendous ramp-up in our Engineering Services business following the recent expiration of the five year automotive non-compete agreement,” he said.

[Graeme]

HyperSolar to build commercial scale renewable hydrogen generator

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')yperSolar, Inc. (OTCBB:HYSR), the developer of a breakthrough technology to produce renewable hydrogen using sunlight and any source of water, has announced its plan to build renewable hydrogen generators for commercial use. Named the H2Generator, the company’s first commercial product is expected to sell at a substantially lower price than other renewable hydrogen systems that rely on expensive and energy intensive electrolyzers to split water.

“We believe that we can offer a cost competitive renewable hydrogen alternative for those who need power 24/7,” said Tim Young, CEO of HyperSolar. “We believe that our intensive R&D efforts will finally pay off in the form of a go to market commercial product. One key discovery was an efficient and low cost polymer protective coating that will allow us to protect solar devices against photocorrosion. Using this coating to treat traditional silicon solar cells, we are able to eliminate the expensive electrolyzer by integrating the electrolysis function directly into a solar cell immersed in water.

“We have given our tech team the green light to complete the product design required to build the first demonstration system,” Young continued. “With a demonstration system in hand, we can then move to the manufacturing phase of the business.”

The HyperSolar H2Generator will be designed to be a linearly scalable and self-contained renewable hydrogen production system. As a result, it is intended to be installed almost anywhere to produce hydrogen fuel for local use. This distributed model of hydrogen production will address one of the greatest challenges of using clean hydrogen fuel on a large scale – the need to transport hydrogen in large quantities.

Each stage of the HyperSolar H2Generator can be scaled independently according to the hydrogen demands and length of storage required for a specific application. A small scale system can be used to produce continuous renewable electricity for a small house, or a large scale system can be used to produce hydrogen to power a community.

[Graeme]

Toyota Joins London Hydrogen Partnership

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')oyota has joined the London Hydrogen Partnership, making it the network’s first major automaker member.

According to London deputy mayor Kit Malthouse, Toyota will work with the LHP to develop a roadmap for fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen refueling stations. The public-private partnership aims to promote hydrogen and fuel cell technology in the city.

Toyota says it will be among the first manufacturers to bring hydrogen-powered vehicles to the European market in 2015. The company has also said it will start selling fuel cell vehicles in the US in 2015, first in California.

Over the last few years the LHP has initiated more than £50 million ($75.8 million) worth of hydrogen projects, rolling-out new hydrogen buses, taxis, scooters, refueling stations, materials handling vehicles and fuel cell combined heat and power units, the organization says.

While fuel cell vehicles remain limited today, with no passenger cars on sale and primarily demonstration-driven roll-outs of buses, fuel cell vehicles should grow to a $1.8 billion market by 2030 at a CAGR of 22 percent, according to a Lux Research report published earlier this year.

[Graeme]

Breakthrough in hydrogen fuel production could revolutionize alternative energy market

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') team of Virginia Tech researchers has discovered a way to extract large quantities of hydrogen from any plant, a breakthrough that has the potential to bring a low-cost, environmentally friendly fuel source to the world.

"Our new process could help end our dependence on fossil fuels," said Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering "Hydrogen is one of the most important biofuels of the future."

Zhang and his team have succeeded in using xylose, the most abundant simple plant sugar, to produce a large quantity of hydrogen that previously was attainable only in theory. Zhang's method can be performed using any source of biomass.

The discovery is a featured editor's choice in an online version of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, International Edition.

This new environmentally friendly method of producing hydrogen utilizes renewable natural resources, releases almost no zero greenhouse gasses, and does not require costly or heavy metals. Previous methods to produce hydrogen are expensive and create greenhouse gases.

The U.S. Department of Energy says that hydrogen fuel has the potential to dramatically reduce reliance of fossil fuels and automobile manufactures are aggressively trying to develop vehicles that run on hydrogen fuel cells. Unlike gas-powered engines that spew out pollutants, the only byproduct of hydrogen fuel is water. Zhang's discovery opens the door to an inexpensive, renewable source of hydrogen.

Jonathan R. Mielenz, group leader of the bioscience and technology biosciences division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who is familiar with Zhang's work but not affiliated with this project, said this discovery has the potential to have a major impact on alternative energy production.

"The key to this exciting development is that Zhang is using the second most prevalent sugar in plants to produce this hydrogen," he said. "This amounts to a significant additional benefit to hydrogen production and it reduces the overall cost of producing hydrogen from biomass."

Mielenz said Zhang's process could find its way to the marketplace as quickly as three years if the technology is available. Zhang said when it does become commercially available, it has the possibility of making an enormous impact.

"The potential for profit and environmental benefits are why so many automobile, oil, and energy companies are working on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as the transportation of the future," Zhang said. "Many people believe we will enter the hydrogen economy soon, with a market capacity of at least $1 trillion in the United States alone."

[Graeme]

Germany-leading-world-toward-hydrogen-solution

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')y now, many have heard about plans by big carmakers including Honda, Toyota, and Hyundai to launch hydrogen fuel-cell cars commercially around 2015. Daimler, Ford, and Nissan plan to launch such cars around 2017. Germany plans to build at least 50 hydrogen fuelling stations by 2015 as the start of a countrywide network. Japan and Korea have announced similar plans.

But a bigger, largely unreported, message is that some European countries, especially Germany, have launched projects that combine renewables like solar and wind with hydrogen for energy storage, implying clean, zero-emission, stable power grids that require no coal, oil, or nuclear power.

Indeed, the bottom line of a new study by two American researchers, Willett Kempton and Cory Budischak, is that the combination of renewables and hydrogen storage could fully power a large electricity grid by 2030 at costs comparable to those today. Kempton and Budischak designed a computer model for wind, solar, and storage to meet demand for one-fifth of the US grid. The results buck ''the conventional wisdom that renewable energy is too unreliable and expensive'', says Mr Kempton.

''For example,'' adds Mr Budischak, ''using hydrogen for storage, we can run an electric system that today would meet a need of 72 gigawatts, 99.9 % of the time, using 17 GW of solar, 68 GW of offshore wind, and 115 GW of inland wind.''

[ralfy]

As others have pointed out, given EROEI, the oil needed to make vehicles, etc., one is better off focusing on using energy resources for regular rail and basic needs rather than for passenger vehicles.

[Graeme]

UK reveals plan for 1.6 million hydrogen cars by 2020

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ith plans to put over one and a half million hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCEVs) on the roads by 2020, the UKH2Mobility project has published its Phase 1 report on how it expects to meet this target and what it has achieved so far.

As it enters the second phase of its programme, the UKH2Mobility consortium also welcomes Sainsbury’s as a new project partner.

According to the new report, it is projected that a fund of £62 million would be needed before 2020 to build refuelling infrastructure in the UK, starting with an initial infrastructure of 62 stations rising to 1,150 by 2030.

It is also projected that FCEVs could offer emissions of around 75 per cent less than a equivalent diesel vehicles, on the way towards achieving zero emissions by 2050.