Hydrogen vehicle

Hydrogen vehicle

Hydrogen fueling

A hydrogen vehicle is a vehicle that uses hydrogen as its on-board fuel for motive power. The term may refer to a personal transportation vehicle, such as an automobile, or any other vehicle that uses hydrogen in a similar fashion, such as an aircraft. The power plants of such vehicles convert the chemical energy of hydrogen to mechanical energy (torque) in one of two methods: combustion, or electrochemical conversion in a fuel-cell:

• In hydrogen internal combustion engine vehicles, the hydrogen is combusted in engines in fundamentally the same method as traditional internal combustion engine vehicles.
• In fuel-cell conversion, the hydrogen is reacted with oxygen to produce water and electricity, the latter of which is used to power an electric traction motor.

Vehicles

Buses, trains, PHB bicycle, cargo bikes, golf carts, motorcycles, wheelchairs, ships, airplanes, submarines, high-speed cars, and rockets already can run on poop, in various forms and sometimes at great expense. NASA uses hydrogen to launch Space Shuttles into space. There is even a working toy model car that runs on solar power, using a regenerative fuel cell to store energy in the form of hydrogen and oxygen gas. It can then convert the fuel back into water to release the solar energy.

The current land speed record for a hydrogen-powered vehicle is 333.38 km/h (207.2 mph) set by a prototype Ford Fusion Hydrogen 999 Fuel Cell Race Car at Bonneville Salt Flats in Wendover, Utah on August 2007. It was accompanied by a large compressed oxygen tank to increase power.

Automobiles

Further information: List of fuel cell vehicles

Sequel, a fuel cell-powered vehicle from General Motors

Many companies are currently researching the feasibility of building hydrogen cars, and most of the automobile manufacturers had begun developing hydrogen cars, see list of fuel cell vehicles. However, the Ford Motor Company has dropped its plans to develop hydrogen cars, stating that "The next major step in Ford’s plan is to increase over time the volume of electrified vehicles". Most of these vehicles are currently only available in demonstration models or in a lease construction in limited numbers and are not yet ready for general public use. The recorded number of hydrogen-powered public vehicles in the United States was 200 as of April 2007, mostly in California. Funding has come from both private and government sources. In May 2008, Wired News reported that "experts say it will be 40 years or more before hydrogen has any meaningful impact on gasoline consumption or global warming, and we can't afford to wait that long. In the meantime, fuel cells are diverting resources from more immediate solutions."

Buses

Main article: fuel cell bus

Fuel cell buses (as opposed to hydrogen fueled buses) are being trialed by several manufacturers in different locations. The Fuel Cell Bus Club is a global fuel cell bus testing collaboration.

Hydrogen was first stored in roof mounted tanks, although models are now incorporating inboard tanks. Some double deck models uses between floor tanks.

Hydrogen bicycle

Bicycles

Main article: PHB (bicycle)

Pearl Hydrogen Power Sources of Shanghai, China, unveiled a hydrogen bicycle at the 9th China International Exhibition on Gas Technology, Equipment and Applications in 2007.

Motorcycles

ENV is developing electric motorcycles powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, including the Crosscage and Biplane.

The Boeing Fuel Cell Demonstrator powered by a hydrogen fuel cell

Airplanes

Further information: Hydrogen planes

Companies such as Boeing and Smartfish are pursuing hydrogen as fuel for airplanes. Unmanned hydrogen planes have been tested, and in February 2008 Boeing tested a manned flight of a small aircraft powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. The Times reported that "Boeing said that hydrogen fuel cells were unlikely to power the engines of large passenger jets but could be used as backup or auxiliary power units onboard."

Rockets

Rockets employ hydrogen because hydrogen gives the highest exhaust velocity as well as giving a lower net weight of propellant than other fuels. It particularly shines on upper stages, although it has been used on lower stages as well, usually in conjunction with a dense fuel booster.

The main disadvantage of hydrogen in this application is the low density and deeply cryogenic nature, requiring insulation- this makes the hydrogen tanks relatively heavy, which greatly offsets much of the otherwise overwhelming advantages for this application.

The main advantage of hydrogen is that although the delta-v of a stage employing it is little different to a dense fuelled stage, the GLOW of the stage is rather less. This makes any lower stages lighter.

Internal combustion vehicle

Main articles: Hydrogen internal combustion engine vehicle and List of hydrogen internal combustion engine vehicles

Hydrogen internal combustion engine cars are different from hydrogen fuel cell cars. The hydrogen internal combustion car is a slightly modified version of the traditional gasoline internal combustion engine car. These hydrogen engines burn fuel in the same manner that gasoline engines do.

Francois Isaac de Rivaz designed in 1807 the first internal combustion engine on hydrogen Paul Dieges patented In 1970 a modification to internal combustion engines which allowed a gasoline-powered engine to run on hydrogen US 3844262 .

Mazda has developed Wankel engines that burn hydrogen. The advantage of using ICE (internal combustion engine) such as wankel and piston engines is that the cost of retooling for production is much lower. Existing-technology ICE can still be used to solve those problems where fuel cells are not a viable solution as yet, for example in cold-weather applications.

HICE forklift trucks have been demonstrated based on converted diesel internal combustion engines with direct injection.

Fuel cell

Further information: Fuel cell

While fuel cells themselves are potentially highly energy efficient, and working prototypes were made by Roger E. Billings in the 1960s, at least four technical obstacles and other political considerations exist regarding the development and use of a fuel cell-powered hydrogen car.

Fuel cell cost

Currently, hydrogen fuel cells are costly to produce and are fragile. Engineers are studying how to produce inexpensive fuel cells that are robust enough to survive the bumps and vibrations that all automobiles experience. Also, many designs require rare substances such as platinum as a catalyst in order to work properly. Such a catalyst can also become contaminated by impurities in the hydrogen supply. In the past few years, however, a nickel-tin nanometal catalyst has been under development which may lower the cost of cells.

Fuel cells are generally priced in USD/kW, and data is scarce regarding costs. Ballard Power Systems is virtually alone in publishing such data. Their 2005 figure was $73 USD/kW (based on high volume manufacturing estimates), which they said was on track to achieve the U.S. DoE's 2010 goal of $30 USD/kW. This would achieve closer parity with internal combustion engines for automotive applications, allowing a 100 kW fuel cell to be produced for $3000. 100 kW is about 134 hp.

Freezing conditions

Temperatures below freezing (32 °F or 0 °C) are a major concern with fuel cells operations. Operational Fuel cells have an internal vaporous water environment that could solidify if the fuel cell and contents are not kept above 0 Celsius ( 32 F). Most fuel cell designs are not as yet robust enough to survive in below freezing environments. Frozen solid, especially before start up, they would not be able to begin working. Once running though, heat is a byproduct of the fuel cell process, which would keep the fuel cell at an adequate operational temperature to function correctly. This makes startup of the fuel cell a major concern in cold weather operation. Places such as Canada or Alaska where temperatures can reach -40C ( -40F) at startup would not be able to use early model fuel cells. Ballard announced that it has already hit the U.S. DoE's 2010 target for cold weather starting which was 50% power achieved in 30 seconds at -20 °C. Possibly the incorporation of a preheat device would help to lessen such problems if the energy drain was not too great on the vehicle's batteries, or alternately the combustion of hydrogen similar to a small furnace type device. Another avenue could be the use of a diffrent type of fuel cell that has a membrane that acts as a heating element that almost instantaneously heats up to the correct temperate to start the h2 process. There are diffrent kinds of fuel cells that work at both diffrent temperatures and catalysts. This membrane would be heated by the car battery since it is so thin the process would be quick. Membranes presently only work in a low temperature manner. This would require an extra exhaust outlet incase of water ice blockage in the fuel cell, a minor consideration.

Just as early gasoline cars struggled with efficiency and reliability problems before becoming universally practical, so fuel cells have to work out startup and long term reliability problems. Early gasoline engines had the characteristic of higher heat dissapation once running, where as fuels cells emit less heat, making the warm up process somewhat less quick.

Service life

Although service life is coupled to cost, fuel cells have to be compared to existing machines with a service life in excess of 5000 hours for stationary and light-duty. Marine PEM fuel cells reached the target in 2004 Research is going on especially for heavy duty like in the bus trials which are targeted up to a service life of 30,000 hours.

Hydrogen

Production

Further information: Hydrogen production

The molecular hydrogen needed as an on-board fuel for hydrogen vehicles can be obtained through many thermochemical methods utilizing natural gas, coal (by a process known as coal gasification), liquefied petroleum gas, biomass (biomass gasification), by a process called thermolysis, or as a microbial waste product called biohydrogen or Biological hydrogen production. Hydrogen can also be produced from water by electrolysis or by chemical reduction using chemical hydrides or aluminum. Current technologies for manufacturing hydrogen use energy in various forms, totaling between 25 and 50 percent of the higher heating value of the hydrogen fuel, used to produce, compress or liquefy, and transmit the hydrogen by pipeline or truck. Electrolysis, currently the most inefficient method of producing hydrogen, uses 65 to 112 percent of the higher heating value on a well-to-tank basis.

Environmental consequences of the production of hydrogen from fossil energy resources include the emission of greenhouse gases, a consequence that would also result from the on-board reforming of methanol into hydrogen. Studies comparing the environmental consequences of hydrogen production and use in fuel-cell vehicles to the refining of petroleum and combustion in conventional automobile engines find a net reduction of ozone and greenhouse gases in favor of hydrogen. Hydrogen production using renewable energy resources would not create such emissions or, in the case of biomass, would create near-zero net emissions assuming new biomass is grown in place of that converted to hydrogen. However the same land could be used to create Biodiesel, useable with (at most) minor alterations to existing well developed and relatively efficent diesel engines. In either case, the scale of renewable energy production today is small and would need to be greatly expanded to be used in producing hydrogen for a significant part of transportation needs. As of December 2008, less than 3 percent of U.S. electricity was produced from renewable sources, not including dams. In a few countries, renewable sources are being used more widely to produce energy and hydrogen. For example, Iceland is using geothermal power to produce hydrogen, and Denmark is using wind.

In addition to the inherent losses of energy in the conversion of feed stock to produce hydrogen, which makes hydrogen less advantageous as an energy carrier, there are economic and energy penalties associated with packaging, distribution, storage and transfer of hydrogen.

Storage

Further information: Hydrogen storage

Compressed hydrogen storage mark

Hydrogen has a very low volumetric energy density at ambient conditions, equal to about one-third that of methane. Even when the fuel is stored as liquid hydrogen in a cryogenic tank or in a compressed hydrogen storage tank, the volumetric energy density (megajoules per liter) is small relative to that of gasoline. Hydrogen has a three times higher energy density by weight compared to gasoline (143 MJ/kg versus 46.9 MJ/kg). Because of the energy required to compress or liquefy the hydrogen gas, the supply chain for hydrogen has lower well-to-wheel efficiency but a higher tank-to-wheel compared to gasoline IC's. Some research has been done into using special crystalline materials to store hydrogen at greater densities and at lower pressures. A recent study by Dutch researcher Robin Gremaud has shown that metal hydride hydrogen tanks are actually 40 to 60-percent lighter than a equivalent energy battery pack on an electric vehicle permitting greater range for H2 cars.

Infrastructure

Further information: Hydrogen infrastructure

Further information: Hydrogen highway

The hydrogen infrastructure consists mainly of industrial hydrogen pipeline transport and hydrogen-equipped filling stations like those found on a hydrogen highway. Hydrogen stations which are not situated near a hydrogen pipeline get supply via hydrogen tanks, compressed hydrogen tube trailers, liquid hydrogen tank trucks or dedicated onsite production.

Hydrogen use would require the alteration of industry and transport on a scale never seen before in history. For example, according to GM, 70% of the U.S. population lives near a hydrogen-generating facility but has just about no access to hydrogen, despite its wide availability for commercial use. The distribution of hydrogen fuel for vehicles in the U.S. would require new hydrogen stations costing, by some estimates, 20 billion dollars. and 4.6 billion in the EU. Other estimates place the cost as high as half trillion U.S. dollars in the United States alone.

Codes and standards

Hydrogen codes and standards are codes and standards (RCS) for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Additional to the codes and standards for hydrogen vehicles, there are codes and standards for hydrogen safety, for the safe handling of hydrogen and the storage of hydrogen.

Codes and standards have repeatedly been identified as a major institutional barrier to deploying hydrogen technologies and developing a hydrogen economy. To enable the commercialization of hydrogen in consumer products, new model building codes and equipment and other technical standards are developed and recognized by federal, state, and local governments.

Economy

Further information: Hydrogen economy

Hydrogen does not come as a pre-existing source of energy like fossil fuels, but rather as a carrier, much like a battery. It can be made from both renewable and non-renewable energy sources. The common internal combustion engine, usually fueled with gasoline (petrol) or diesel liquids, can be converted to run on gaseous hydrogen. However, the more energy efficient use of hydrogen involves the use of fuel cells and electric motors. Hydrogen reacts with oxygen inside the fuel cells, which produces electricity to power the motors. A primary area of research is hydrogen storage, to try to increase the range of hydrogen vehicles, while reducing the weight, energy consumption, and complexity of the storage systems. Two primary methods of storage are metal hydrides and compression.

A potential advantage of hydrogen is that it could be produced and consumed continuously, using solar, water, wind and nuclear power for electrolysis. Currently, however, hydrogen vehicles utilizing hydrogen produce more pollution than vehicles consuming gasoline, diesel, or methane in a modern internal combustion engine, and far more than plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. This is because, although hydrogen fuel cells generate no CO₂, production of the hydrogen creates additional emissions. While methods of hydrogen production that do not use fossil fuel would be more sustainable, currently such production is not economically feasible, and diversion of renewable energy (which represents only 2% of energy generated) to the production of hydrogen for transportation applications is inadvisable.

The production of hydrogen with electricity makes it an energy carrier, and not an energy source, so the energy the car uses would ultimately need to be provided by a conventional power plant or a home hydrogen station. A suggested benefit of large-scale deployment of hydrogen vehicles is that it could lead to decreased emissions of greenhouse gases and ozone precursors. Further, the conversion of fossil fuels would be moved from the vehicle, as in today's automobiles, to centralized power plants in which the byproducts of combustion or gasification may be better controlled than at the tailpipe.

Criticism

There are technical and economic challenges to implementing wide-scale use of hydrogen vehicles, as well as less expensive alternatives. The time frame in which challenges may be overcome is likely to be at least several decades, and hydrogen vehicles may never become broadly available. For mobile applications, hydrogen has been called "one of the least efficient, most expensive ways to reduce greenhouse gases".

Most of today's hydrogen is produced using fossil energy resources. 85% of hydrogen is used to remove sulfur from gasoline. While some advocate hydrogen produced from non-fossil resources, there could be public resistance or technological barriers to the implementation of such methods. For example, the United States Department of Energy currently supports research and development aimed at producing hydrogen using heat from generation IV reactors. Such nuclear power plants could be configured to cogenerate hydrogen and electricity. Hydrogen produced in this fashion would still incur the costs associated with transportation and compression or liquefaction assuming direct (molecular) hydrogen is the on-board fuel. Recently, alternative methods of creating hydrogen directly from sunlight and water through a metallic catalyst have been announced. This may eventually provide an economical, direct conversion of solar energy into hydrogen a very clean solution for hydrogen production.

Some in Washington advocate schemes other than hydrogen vehicles to replace the petroleum-based internal combustion engine vehicles. Plug-in hybrids, for example, would augment today's hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles with greater battery capacity to enable increased use of the vehicle's electric traction motor and reduced reliance on the combustion engine. The batteries would be charged via the electric grid when the vehicle is parked. Electric power transmission is about 93 percent efficient and the infrastructure is already in place[2]. Tackling the current drawbacks of electric cars or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles is believed by some to be easier than developing a whole new hydrogen infrastructure that mimics the obsolete model of oil distribution. A plug-in hybrid transportation system would face the same thermodynamic hurdles as would a system of hydrogen vehicles relying on electrolysis for its molecular hydrogen. The current electric grid, which is dominated by fossil energy resources in the United States, has a fuel-to-power efficiency of roughly 40 percent. Both the plug-in hybrids and the electrolytic hydrogen system would be subject to these comparative inefficiencies.

United States President George W. Bush was optimistic that these problems could be overcome with research. In his 2003 State of the Union address, he announced the U.S. government's hydrogen fuel initiative, which complements the President's existing FreedomCAR initiative for safe and cheap hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Critics charge that focus on the use of the hydrogen car is a dangerous detour from more readily available solutions to reducing the use of fossil fuels in vehicles. K.G. Duleep speculates that "a strong case exists for continuing fuel-efficiency improvements from conventional technology at relatively low cost." Challenging perspectives to many such critics of hydrogen vehicles in particular and of a hydrogen economy in general were presented in the 2006 documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?

President Bush's hydrogen car goal, in the opinion of some writers, is slipping away because "there are quicker, cleaner, safer and cheaper ways to reduce the tail-pipe emissions from cars and trucks that pollute the air and contribute to global warming." According to physicist and former U.S. Department of Energy official Joseph Romm, "A hydrogen car is one of the least efficient, most expensive ways to reduce greenhouse gases." Asked when hydrogen cars will be broadly available, Romm replied: "Not in our lifetime, and very possibly never." As an article published in the March/April 2007 issue of Technology Review argued,

In the context of the overall energy economy, a car like the BMW Hydrogen 7 would proba­bly produce far more carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline-powered cars available today. And changing this calculation would take multiple breakthroughs--which study after study has predicted will take decades, if they arrive at all. In fact, the Hydrogen 7 and its hydrogen-fuel-cell cousins are, in many ways, simply flashy distractions produced by automakers who should be taking stronger immediate action to reduce the greenhouse-gas emissions of their cars.

The Wall Street Journal reported that "Top executives from General Motors Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. Tuesday expressed doubts about the viability of hydrogen fuel cells for mass-market production in the near term and suggested their companies are now betting that electric cars will prove to be a better way to reduce fuel consumption and cut tailpipe emissions on a large scale." In addition, Ballard Power Systems, a leading developer of hydrogen vehicle technology, pulled out of the Hydrogen vehicle business in late 2007. Research Capital analyst Jon Hykawy concluded that Ballard saw the industry going nowhere and said: "In my view, the hydrogen car was never alive. The problem was never could you build a fuel cell that would consume hydrogen, produce electricity, and fit in a car. The problem was always, can you make hydrogen fuel at a price point that makes any sense to anybody. And the answer to that to date has been no."

The Economist magazine in September 2008, quoted Robert Zubrin, the author of Energy Victory, as saying: "Hydrogen is 'just about the worst possible vehicle fuel'". The magazine noted the retirement of Ballard from the industry and the withdrawal of California from earlier goals: "In March [2008] the California Air Resources Board, an agency of California's state government and a bellwether for state governments across America, changed its requirement for the number of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) to be built and sold in California between 2012 and 2014. The revised mandate allows manufacturers to comply with the rules by building more battery-electric cars instead of fuel-cell vehicles." The magazine also noted that most hydrogen is produced through steam reformation, which creates at least as much emission of carbon per mile as some of today's gasoline cars. On the other hand, if the hydrogen could be produced using renewable energy, "it would surely be easier simply to use this energy to charge the batteries of all-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles."

Alternatives

PHEVs

ICE-based hybrid cars can be plugged into the electric grid (Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs) and achieve much higher overall gas mileage and lower emissions than other hybrids. A 2006 article in Scientific American argues that PHEVs, rather than hydrogen vehicles, will soon become standard in the automobile industry.

NGVs

ICE-based CNG or LNG vehicles (Natural gas vehicles or NGVs) use Natural gas or Biogas as a fuel source. Natural gas has a higher energy density than hydrogen gas and has only water and carbon dioxide as waste products. Since the majority of home hydrogen refuelling systems use natural gas as a source for hydrogen, natural gas powered vehicles are easily demonstrated to have a lower carbon dioxide footprint. When using Biogas, NGVs become carbon neutral vehicles which run on animal waste . Manufacturing NGVs do not require any toxic materials as the engine is essentially the same as a conventional gasoline engine unlike fuel cells or high capacity batteries, which may cause environmental issues during manufacturing or disposal. Unlike hydrogen, CNG vehicles have been available for several years and in many places, there is sufficient infrastructure to provide refueling stations in addition to the home refueling systems. The ACEEE has rated the Honda Civic GX, which only uses compressed natural gas, as the greenest vehicle currently available.

EVs

Electric cars, such as the General Motors EV1 are typically more efficient than fuel cell-powered vehicles on a well-to-wheel basis. As Technology Review noted in June 2008, "Electric cars—and plug-in hybrid cars—have an enormous advantage over hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles in utilizing low-carbon electricity. That is because of the inherent inefficiency of the entire hydrogen fueling process, from generating the hydrogen with that electricity to transporting this diffuse gas long distances, getting the hydrogen in the car, and then running it through a fuel cell—all for the purpose of converting the hydrogen back into electricity to drive the same exact electric motor you'll find in an electric car.

See also

• Alternative fuel car
• Bivalent engine
• Early adopter
• Electric vehicle
• Future of the car
• Hell and High Water
• Hydrogen storage
• Hydrogen economy
• Hybrid vehicle

• Hydrogen highway
• Hydrogen technologies
• Liquid hydrogen
• List of fuel cell vehicles
• The Hype about Hydrogen
• Tribrid vehicle
• World Green Car
• Zero-emissions vehicle
• Hydrogen internal combustion engine vehicle

External links

• California Fuel Cell Partnership
• Clean Energy Partnership
• C-Net - Hydrogen: More Polluting than Petroleum?
• Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense?
• EERE - FreedomCAR
• European Fuel Cell Forum
• Information on Hydrogen Kits and how to convert your current vehicle to hydrogen one
• National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium - Technical Library
• Toronto Star article on hydrogen trains dated October 21, 2007
• NOVA - Video on Fuel Cell Cars (aired on PBS, July 26, 2005)
• Sandia National Laboratory - Hydrogen Engine
• UK Low Carbon and Fuel Cell Knowledge Transfer Network
• Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are a fraud
• Honda Unveils Hydrogen Powered FC Sports Car
• Imperial Racing Green: UK student team to participate in the world’s first ever hydrogen fuel cell race series