Hydrogen Mirror 5/2013

Transcription

1 1 CONTENTS 2 General France's start into hydrogen mobility... 2 Mobile applications Europe's first indoor hydrogen filling station Hyundai in London GM and Honda cooperate British endurance artist Stationary Applications Thüga starts building power-to-gas plant Another power-to-gas plant by E.ON Canadian fuel cells for Chinese mobile phone users Fuel cell protects computer centre in Frankfurt Infrastructure Looking for a site Research News Start for sensor project Simple method with important effects Energy and Climate Opportunities along the lower Elbe Politics Second phase of FCH-JTI... 7

2 2 GENERAL 2.1 FRANCE'S START INTO HYDROGEN MOBILITY 5. July was the start for the French initiative Mobilité Hydrogène France, an association of twenty-four partners from production, storage, energy supply, and politics. The task of the group is to create an economically feasible development plan for a hydrogen filling station infrastructure in France to be established between 2015 and Economical considerations will be a part of the work. The French hydrogen and fuel cell association AFHyPAC contributed a lot to the foundation, and so did the ministries for environment, sustainable development, and energy. First results about costs and advantages are to be published at the end of this year. At this time Mobilité Hydrogène France comprises the following partners: Air Liquide, Alphéa Hydrogène, AREVA, CEA, CETH2, EDF, GDF SUEZ, GRTgaz, IFPEN, INEVA-CNRT, Intelligent Energy, ITM Power, Linde, Michelin, McPhy Energy, Pole Vehicle of the Future, PHyRENEES, Solvay, Symbio FCell, Tenerrdis, and WH2; experts from FCH-JU, ADEME, CGSP (planning department of the Prime Minister) and DGEC (Direction General Energy and Climate) take part. MOBILE APPLICATIONS 2.2 EUROPE'S FIRST INDOOR HYDROGEN FILLING STATION The delivery of the first of ten materials handling vehicles using a fuel cell hybrid drive and the start of operation of Europe's first indoor hydrogen filling station on 7. June in Linz (Austria) marked the start of the field test phase of the research project E-LOG-Biofleet which was initiated in 2011; partners are DB Schenker, Linde Material Handling, Fronius International, OMV, HyCentA Research and JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft. The objective of the project is to exceed the productivity of forklifts etc. running on batteries which have long periods out of service for battery charging. Fronius offers as substitute a system called HyLOG which was developed specifically for this type of fleet service together with Linde Material Handling. It comprises a PEM fuel cell, a Lithium-Ion battery and a pressure tank for hydrogen under up to 200 bar. The power output is 2.6 kw with peaks up to 11 kw. The site of the field test is the establishment of the freight company DB Schenker in Linz. OMV developed a filling station in the hall, something unique in Europe at this time. Filling pressures up to 350 bar are possible. Hydrogen is produced on-site by reformation of biomethane. So the ecological balance remains in the green domain.

3 (Joint press release of 11. June 2013) Hydrogen Mirror 5/ HYUNDAI IN LONDON The Korean car maker Hyundai becomes a member of the London Hydrogen Network Expansion (LNHE). Five cars of the type ix35 will be contributed. These cars will be leased to prominent individuals and to companies in the city. They form a part of the 1000 which the company will build until 2015 in Ulsan (Korea). Most of them will be provided on the continent, mainly as part of demonstrations projects in the framework of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU) of the European Commission. (Hyundai press release of 18. June 2013) 2.4 GM AND HONDA COOPERATE On 2. July General Motors and Honda announced the signing of a long-term framework agreement for the joint development of the next generation of fuel cell and hydrogen storage technologies until Both sides expect advantages from the cooperation in terms of scaling effects and common purchase strategies. GM and Honda plan to cooperate with various interest groups in order to promote the installation of a filling infrastructure. It is essential for the breakthrough of filling stations and their acceptance by the consumer. Honda has already announced to introduce the FCX clarity successor into the market in the USA and Japan in 2015, later also in Europe. GM will announce plans for the production of fuel cell vehicles later. (GM press release of 2. July 2013) 2.5 BRITISH ENDURANCE ARTIST The British chemical engineering company ACAL Energy Ltd. announces that a fuel cell designed there has achieved an operating time of hours in an endurance test performed by the car industry. This equivalent to a driving range of almost km. The target of the US DoE for fuel cells in cars is 5000 operating hours with a degradation of not more than 10 %. According to the company the cell operates not with a platinum based catalyst, but a patented liquid catalyst. The liquid is used for cooling as well. (ACAL press release of 28. June 2013)

4 3 STATIONARY APPLICATIONS 3.1 THÜGA STARTS BUILDING POWER-TO-GAS PLANT The ground breaking ceremony for a power-to-gas demonstration plant by Thüga group (network of German local energy utilities) was performed on 3. July in Frankfurt am Main. By the end of 2013 the plant will start converting power to hydrogen and feed it into the local gas grid. Until 2016 the companies will collect experiences how the plant performes in practical operation. The operational phase will be accompanied by scientific project partners, and it will be supported from the state ministry for environment, energy, agriculture, and consumer protection of the state of Hesse. The nucleus of the plant is a PEM electrolyser by ITM Power. In one hour the plant will produce some 60 m³ of hydrogen which will result in 3000 m³ hydrogen enriched natural gas fed into the grid. After 2016 the demonstration plant will be extended with a module converting the hydrogen into methane which will be introduced into the grid. 3.2 ANOTHER POWER-TO-GAS PLANT BY E.ON The ground breaking for a power-to-gas plant in Reitbrook (Hamburg) was done on 24. June jointly by Hamburg's First Mayor Olaf Scholz, Enak Ferlemann, Parliamentary secretary of state in the ministry of transport, and Matthias Boxberger, board chairman of E.ON Hanse AG. The building time for the plant will be 1.5 years. Regular operation will start in The financial volume of the project is more than 13 M. It is financially supported by the federal ministry for transport, building, and city development (BMVBS) by means of the National Innovation Program Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology (NIP) with 6.5 M. Project partners are E.ON Hanse AG, Hydrogenics GmbH, SolviCore GmbH, the German Aerospace Centre and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. (NOW press release of 24. June 2013) 3.3 CANADIAN FUEL CELLS FOR CHINESE MOBILE PHONE USERS Ballard announced end of July that it will deliver 220 ElectraGen systems to its Chinese partner Azure Hydrogen. This are emergency power supply systems used for mobile phone networks. 120 of them run on hydrogen, 100 on methanol. They will be delivered until the end of the year. (Ballard press release of 26. July 2013)

5 3.4 FUEL CELL PROTECTS COMPUTER CENTRE IN FRANKFURT On 16. July the computer centre operator Equinix celebrated in Frankfurt the start of operation of a QuattroGeneration fuel cell at its International Business Exchange Computer Centre FR4. The system was developed by N2telligence. QuattroGeneration supplies power and heat (or cooling, respectively) to the site but provides also fire protection by oxygen reduction - which is new for a computer centre on this level of integration. (N2telligence press release of 17. July 2013) 4 Infrastructure 4.1 LOOKING FOR A SITE The Dutch company Ballast Nedam will built a hydrogen filling station in the south of the Netherlands which can provide vehicles with gas under pressure up to 700 bar. For two years the company will also operate the station. The site is not yet defined. At this time Ballast Nedam builds a station for the project WaterstofNet at Helmond, near Eindhoven. There hydrogen will be made from green power and dispensed under up to 350 bar. Operation will start this year. This might also be the site for the 700 bar station. Until 2050 the company expects the complete decarbonization of urban transport. (Press release of 4. July 2013) 5 RESEARCH NEWS 5.1 START FOR SENSOR PROJECT Hydrogen sensors for use in cars must respond reliably, They must be sensitive, accurate, fast, and not prone to false alarms. And they must consume little energy and money. Meeting these demands is the objective a an international project which started recently. Six partners from Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy have joined in the project H2Sense. The consortium includes BAM Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, which is coordinating the project, the Joint Research Centre Institute for Energy and Transport in the Netherlands, the Baden-Württemberg Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research (ZSW), and private companies including the German companies Environmental Sensor Technology (USW), AppliedSensor GmbH, and Sensitron S.r.l. from Italy. H2Sense is funded jointly by the European public-private joint venture FCH JU (Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking) and by the EU. The aim of the project is to show the development of affordable and reliable hydrogen sensors and to demonstrate that such sensors can contribute to the safe use of hydrogen as an alternative energy carrier.

6 (BAM press release of 17. July 2013) Hydrogen Mirror 5/ SIMPLE METHOD WITH IMPORTANT EFFECTS Using a simple solar cell and a photo anode from a metal oxide researchers from the Helmholtz Centre in Berlin and the TU Delft could store almost 5 % of the incoming solar radiation chemically as hydrogen. The breakthrough is that the solar cell used is much simpler than the high performance cells consisting of triple junctions or thin, amorphous silicon layers or expensive III-V semiconductors used elsewhere for this purpose. The photo anode consists of the metal oxide bismuth-vanadate (BiVO4) plus additional tungsten atoms; it was simply sprayed on the substrate and covered with an inexpensive cobalt phosphate catalyst. So the chemical stability and low price of metal oxides was combined with a good, but rather simple silicon thin layer solar cell to get an inexpensive, very stable, and powerful cell. Only the metal oxide layer is in contact with water and acts as photo anode for the formation of oxygen. At the same time it protects the sensible silicon cell from corrosion. The researchers think that efficiencies up to 9 % are feasible. F. F. Abdi et al., Nature Communications 4 (2013) doi: /ncomms ENERGY AND CLIMATE 6.1 OPPORTUNITIES ALONG THE LOWER ELBE The industrial region at the lower Elbe (downstream from Hamburg) can establish a powerful hydrogen economy until This would require infrastructure investments of more than 500 M and associated legal and political boundary conditions, according to a study which was made for politics and economy and was presented on 12. August in Hamburg. A part of the hydrogen could be generated using excess wind power and be stored in underground caverns as energy storage. The study shows how electrolysis plants for hydrogen generation and pipelines for transport could be built step by step in Hamburg, Brunsbuettel, and around Stade; later they could grow into one network. Most expensive are the electrolysis plants, but the costs for them are expected to drop by one fourth until From 2020 onward the city of Hamburg will buy only zero-emission buses for public transport. This plus the increasing share of fuel cell cars which is expected will amount to a regional demand for t of hydrogen for transport, according to the study. This would be one fourth of the industrial demand.

7 The states involved and the companies will not clarify the possibility of the practical realization of the infrastructure project and check the means to finance it. (ChemCoast press release of 12. August 2013) 7 POLITICS 7.1 SECOND PHASE OF FCH-JTI The European Commission starts into the second phase of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen (FCH) Joint Technology Initiative (JTI) which was created in The financial volume is 1.4 G, equally divided between public and private funds. FCH 2 JTI will start 2014 and end Among the objectives are: Lowering the costs of fuel cells for transport by the factor 10 Enhancing the electrical efficiency of fuel cells for power production by 10 % Demonstration of the feasibility of large scale hydrogen production from renewable sources. (Press release of the European Commission of 10. July 2013)