The Fuel Of Future: Hydrogen
I think we can all agree, the sooner we decrease on fossil fuels and develop new energy sources, the better. Whether you believe in climate change or not the benefits extend beyond just the reduction in green house gas emissions and the supply of oil and gas will inevitably dry. Tesla pioneered our greatest hope in this space to date with the development and popularization of battery technology. But, as we’ve seen, they are struggling to meet the enormous half a million pre-orders for the Model 3. Elon self proclaimed production hell has resulted in delay after delay. Bloomberg estimates that Tesla have produced around 12,000 Model 3S to date with the current production rate of 1000 per week which will gradually grow to a target output of 5000 per week. But those at the tail end of the pre-order line could be waiting until 2020 to get their Model 3. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Last year 72 million passengers’ cars were built that is nearly 1.4 million vehicles a week. No matter how successful the internet wants Tesla to become, they will never solve this issue alone and the industry as a whole, likely won’t be able to solve it with a battery only approach. The demand for lithium ion battery technology is simply growing faster than the supply of lithium can satisfy. So it seems clear: we need a multi-faceted approach to solve this problem. Another solution, which was the industry favorite to take over from fossil fuels, not so long ago, is hydrogen fuel technology and companies like Toyota and Shell are working to develop this industry. It won’t be an easy race but hydrogen may well prove to be the tortoise that beats hare. Hydrogen has three primary obstacles it needs to overcome to come a viable energy sources for any industry – safety, infrastructure and the cost. Let’s get the big elephant in the room out of the way first and I know it’s on your mind.
Safety Is Concern
If hydrogen fuel cells are ever going to make it to public roads at scale, the hydrogen needs not only to be safe but to be perceived as safe. And yes filling a gigantic, incredibly flammable balloon with hydrogen is a pretty bad idea. Hydrogen has a relatively low ignition temperature and a very wide ignition range for air to fuel mixture percentages. The fact that it’s pressurized makes explosions a worry but it has one massive advantage over oil derived fuels. It is lighter than air: it can be purged using emergency valves in the event of a fire and if it does ignite it won’t pool, around the vehicle engulfing it and its passengers in flames. Toyota even tested their carbon fiber tank by shooting it with a 0.50 caliber round. The tank didn’t explode it, simply let the lighter than air gas to escape and vent to the atmosphere. Hydrogen is arguably safer than gasoline so safety isn’t a huge concern for hydrogen. But the lack of infrastructure is. Battery operated vehicles have had a huge head start in the space, the electric grid is a pre built transportation and generation network for the fuel the battery operated vehicles require and installing a charger in your driveway of garage isn’t a huge challenge. Hydrogen doesn’t have such luxuries to kick start the hydrogen economy. There are a few large scale production facilities in the world with the largest being the Shell Rhineland oil refinement facility it uses its own hydrogen production in the oil refinement process but he lessons learned from these efforts have allowed the Shell and its partner ITM to make a hydrogen a viable option for uses in energy storage.
Tesla Battery Chargers
Transportation
Transporting hydrogen in pressurized trucks would be too expensive as there are no large scale productions facilities are available at regular places and although hydrogen can be transported within the already established natural gas pipelines around the world, for use in vehicles we need pure hydrogen. So Shell and ITM took the next logical step to keep cost down they built a hydrogen production and storage facility on site. The production facility is placed just behind the main station and is capable of producing 80 kg of hydrogen a day. The Toyota Mirai on sight has a range of 480 kilometers with full 5 kilograms tanks of hydrogen. Vastly more than a full charge for a Tesla but you much considers the huge upfront cost of batteries which don’t last forever in this equation for cost. Let’s see how hydrogen actually works?
How Hydrogen Actually Works?
The production process of hydrogen is pretty simple. It uses a process called electrolysis to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzer consists of two metal coated electrodes and a DC power source which provide a negative and positive charge. Hydrogen will appear at the cathode, the negative electrode, where electrons react with the water to for, hydrogen and hydroxide ions. These negative ions now present in the water are attracted to the anode or positive electrode where they oxidized to form oxygen and water. The rate of production of oxygen and hydrogen depends on the electric current. But pure water is not very conductive. We would need to increase the voltage or increase the conductivity it’s much more efficient to increase conductivity so an electrolyte, in the form of salt is often included as a charge carrier. This is the oldest and most well established production method for hydrogen. This method isn’t suitable for quick response times with slow starter procedures and safety concerns making it completely unsuitable for variable renewable energy sources which have historically made hydrogen prohibitively expensive. If hydrogen has any hope of becoming a popular fuel source, we first need to get its price down to be competitive with batteries and fossil fuels. This has been a major point of research for the past years. PEM or Proton Exchange Membranes are the primary solution, now coming to solution to market that are facilitating a realistic hydrogen economy.
Proton Exchange Membrane
PEM replaces the electrolyte rich water for a solid polymer electrolyte membrane sandwiched between the anode and cathode which channels to allow water and gas and solution to flow through. As its name suggests, the PEM only allows protons to pass through. So hydrogen ions, otherwise known as protons now become the charge carriers rather than hydroxide ions. But the overall chemical reaction is exactly the same while requiring less voltage to operate efficiently and more importantly has a rapid response time making it ideal for integration to the grid as an energy storage method and this is where it truly drives down costs.
Shell Hydrogen Plant
The hydrogen fuel cell and cars use this exact process in reverse to power their electric motors. The cost of hydrogen production by electrolysis is completely dependent on electricity prices. If an electrolyzer cannot take advantage of cheaper intermittent surge electricity or use cheaper off peak electricity then it’s losing out on real cost savings and can’t provide the valuable service of energy storage for the grid. This hydrogen facility at the Shell station can form an important part of the renewable grid infrastructure going forward. Hydrogen’s greatest chance at success is by fuelling a new economy of hydrogen where natural gas pipelines are supplemented with hydrogen with cheap renewable energy allowing hydrogen to gradually grow to be the Earth’s primarily energy storage method and facilitating renewable energy to become a larger part of our energy grid without the worry of weather impacting energy supply allowing nations to stop depending on importation of fossil fuels and instead grow their own fuel economy. There are some island in Ireland that are Irish speaking islands popular with tourists for their unique landscape who have historically depended completely on the mainland for fuel. There are no trees here no coal, no turf, no oil but what they do have in plenty supply is wave and wind energy. They are perfect candidates to develop a mini hydrogen economy, an economy where they generate their own renewable energy and create their own fuel to heat homes and power their vehicles.
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