Hydrogen Mirror 5/ CONTENTS

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1 1 CONTENTS 2 General Japanese-German event in Berlin Mobile applications New hydrogen buses for Hamburg Hydrogen kart race at Herten Electrical nose wheel in test HYCHAIN MINI TRANS finished successfully Stationary Applications Hydrogen supports wind power: practical test Fuel cells provide lighting at final shuttle start Infrastructure filling stations expected worldwide for Research News Bacterial fuel cells Energy and Climate Hydrogen as balancing energy Politics Obama sets targets for fuel efficiency People William Robert Grove... 7

2 2 GENERAL 2.1 JAPANESE-GERMAN EVENT IN BERLIN As part of their activities for information exchange the German NOW GmbH and Japan's New Energy and Technology Development Organization (NEDO) held a joint workshop on 27. June 2011 in Berlin. It was mainly about practical experience, regulations and standards and marketing plans for fuel cells both in the domain of transport and of stationary energy supply. More than 50 representatives of industry and politics from both countries attended. They heard presentations on the state of the art and the project status in all the application fields. Subsequent discussions were mainly about the identification of common interests and differences between the markets of both countries as well as finding domains of future cooperation. (Press release of NOW GmbH of 18. July 2011) 3 MOBILE APPLICATIONS 3.1 NEW HYDROGEN BUSES FOR HAMBURG On 17. August Hamburger Hochbahn (city transport utility) received the first samples of the new generation of the Daimler Citaro city bus with fuel cell drive. They are four for the moment, with three more to follow next year. These buses are used here for the first time in regular scheduled service. They can recuperate braking energy and store it in lithium ion batteries. So the consumption of hydrogen will be reduced by one half to 10 kg per 100 km. The new bus generation also has fuel cells which are in a further stadium of development. They are expected to live for at least six years or operating hours. The project is part of the Clean Energy Partnership (CEP) and is financially supported by the National Innovation Program Hydrogen and Fuel Cell NIP). Rainer Bomba, secretary of state in the federal transport ministry, said on occasion of the bus start: Hydrogen and fuel cell technology is clean and efficient. It has the potential to make our transport more sustainable and also to exploit new markets. Hochbahn head Guenter Elste sees the development as sheer necessity: In 20 to 25 years crude oil and thus Diesel will be too expensive to fuel buses. For this reason HOCHBAHN intends to buy electric buses only with the begin of the next decade. The start of operation of this new bus generation is an important step on the road to electric mobility.

3 3.2 HYDROGEN KART RACE AT HERTEN The first race of karts converted to fuel cell drive was held at Herten (North Rhine-Westphalia) on 16. July. The teams consisted mainly of apprentices from plant manufacturers. Supervised by their teachers and a safety specialist they had equipped a commercial cart each with a hydrogen cylinder and a fuel cell over a few months. After several races and tests the apprentices of Ruhrkohle AG scored first, followed by the Duesseldorf city utility. There were a few driving mistakes and also a collision with the barrier, but no major accidents or incidents. The organizers are satisfied with the event. The project as a whole and the final race contributed to making hydrogen and fuel cell technology further known, in particular among young people. 3.3 ELECTRICAL NOSE WHEEL IN TEST In June the DLR research aircraft A320 ATRA (Advanced Technology Research Aircraft) taxied over the airport of Hamburg- Finkenwerder (Airbus company airfield) driven by an electrical nose wheel. The tests were finished on 30. Juni 2011 successfully and were performed by researchers and engineers of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Airbus, and Lufthansa Technik. It was the first time that a fuel cell driven electrical nose wheel was tested. A commercial airliner with such a wheel can taxi to the runway without emitting harmful exhaust and without using the engines. For the case of the Frankfurt airport this would lead to a reduction of 17 to 19 % of the emissions produced during taxiing and of almost 100 % of the noise. The use of the fuel cell would also reduce the use of the engines. This would mean that the maintenance intervals of the latter could be longer. When a short trip airliner with up to seven starts per day moves over the apron with an electrical nose wheel the operation of the engines could be reduced by up to two hours. (DLR press release of 11. July 2011) 3.4 HYCHAIN MINI TRANS FINISHED SUCCESSFULLY After six years the duration of the EU project HYCHAIN MINI-TRANS ended on 30. June Hydrogen vehicles were developed and tested in four European regions (France, Spain, Germany / North Rhine-Westphalia, Italy); the installation of a suitable hydrogen infrastructure was initiated and supported as well. The financial volume of the project of 38 M included 17 M funding by the European Union. During a joint press conference of the German partner cities Bottrop, Gladbeck, Herten, and Marl together with AIR LIQUIDE Deutschland GmbH and Hydrogenics GmbH held on 28. Juni at Herten all participants came to a posivite conclusion concerning research and development, experience, and perspectives gained from the project.

4 For Dr. Uli Paetzel, mayor of the hydrogen city Herten, hydrogen and fuel cells are already part of his everyday business. Our long term commitment, not only for the companies in Herten but also in HYCHAIN MINI-TRANS, has created jobs because the companies could collect valuable experience for the improvement of their products. The vehicles circulated in the partner regions as well. This resulted in valuable contacts which are also of help for the normal business. Volker Lindner, chairman of hte regional association h2-netzwerk-ruhr, sees the effect in particular in an improvement of regional cooperation. The whole value chain in the Ruhr metropolis was involved in this project and has again intensified the cooparation between the cities and companies. The Ruhr region is very well positioned for future projects in the technology field hydrogen and fuel cells. Even though HYCHAIN MINI-TRANS as such is finished the partners have agreed that the vehicles will continue to be operated in the cities. There are also plans to purchase larger fuel cell vehicles. (Press release of Energieagentur NRW of 28. June 2011) 4 STATIONARY APPLICATIONS 4.1 HYDROGEN SUPPORTS WIND POWER: PRACTICAL TEST The ground breaking ceremony for an innovative energy storage plant was performed on July 7 by the WIND-projekt engineering company under participation of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Prime Minister Erwin Sellering. The CO2 free plant will be part of a new wind power park which is being built north of Neubrandenburg in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The project is known as RH2-WKA. The objective is to make wind power storable independent from time and CO2 free. The key to do this is Regenerative Hydrogen (RH2), which is produced by electrolysis. This hydrogen can be re-converted to power on demand. This electrolyser has a power of 1000 kw which makes it the biggest in Germany which is connected to a wind power plant. The wind-hydrogen system will provide power for a continuous supply, and it might also be used to provide heat and hydrogen for other economic purposes like fuel or heating gas. It is planned to build a filling station and to feed hydrogen into the local natural gas grid. From the point of view of the WIND-projekt company the ground breaking was the start into the energy storage domain and the development of regional climate protection technology. The project is supported with 4.5 M from NIP.

5 4.2 FUEL CELLS PROVIDE LIGHTING AT FINAL SHUTTLE START The last start of the NASA Space Shuttle was on 20. July. Much more camera teams and photographers were present than usual. The US company Multiquip provided auxiliary lighting by means of its Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Light Tower (H2LT). A fuel cell provided also power for the charging of the batteries of the cameras of the journalists. This use of the system was the last of a whole series of tests under full operating conditions, among them the Oscar awarding ceremony 2010 and that for the Grammys and Golden Globes The system makes no noise and works for 68 hours. Commercial production will begin in the last quarter of this year. (Multiquip press release of 20. July 2011) 5 INFRASTRUCTURE FILLING STATIONS EXPECTED WORLDWIDE FOR 2020 The US market research and advisory company Pike Research expects that in 2020 there will be more than 5200 filling stations worldwide for cars, buses, and forklifts. Last year this figure was 200. Investments in this field over the whole period are estimated to be 8.4 G$, 1.6 of them in the final year. Hydrogen demand from this sector is expected to rise from 775 t (2010) to t (2020). (Press release of 19. July 2011) 6 RESEARCH NEWS 6.1 BACTERIAL FUEL CELLS In the vicinity of Black Smokers, chimney-like geothermal sources some 3000 m below sea level, scientists have discovered shells which can genererate energy from hydrogen by means of bacteria in an environment up to 400 C hot. This appears to be a rather common and highly efficient concept. It appears that shells, worms, and shrimps with the help of certain bacteria can oxidize not only hydrogen sulfide and methane to generate energy, but also pure hydrogen. In the Logatchev thermal area, located on the Middle Atlantic Ridge between Capverdian Islands and Caribbean Sea, in particular the mussel variant Bathymodiolus was found to do this. In its gills there are at least two kinds of bacteria enabling it to gain energy from hydrogen sulfide and methane. Now another gene was found there enabling the animal to oxidize the hydrogen which comes from the hot springs. They could find the gene also in worms and shrimps. it is assumed that the ability to use hydrogen as energy source is rather common among the symbiotic communities of the deep sea. It may even be much more important than the oxidation

6 of methane and sulfide: oxidizing hydrogen in the Logatchev thermal area yields 7 times more energy than that of methane and up to 18 times more than in the case of hydrogen sulfide. Another astonishing figure is the hydrogen consumption of the mussels: the animals used up to 5000 l of the gas per hour. (Petersen et al., Nature 476 (2011) )) 7 ENERGY AND CLIMATE 7.1 HYDROGEN AS BALANCING ENERGY 120 experts from energy providers and hydrogen companies met on 16. August 2011 in Darmstadt to discuss the potential contributions of hydrogen and fuel cells to a future safe energy supply in the framework of a workshop on Balancing Energy Approaches using hydrogen and fuel cells organized by the environment ministry of the State of Hesse and the state hydrogen and fuel cell initiative (H2BZ). It became obvious that the contribution of hydrogen and fuel cell technology for safe and clean energy in the future can be indeed remarkable. The increasing role of renewables makes efficient storage more and more important. Hydrogen is a promising approach in particular for long term storage. Dynamic electrolysers for hydrogen generation can be used as flexible balancing load in particular in places where hydrogen can be used as such or converted into another form of energy. The most profitable use of the stored hydrogen is in fuel cell vehicles. 8 POLITICS 8.1 OBAMA SETS TARGETS FOR FUEL EFFICIENCY In a statement which was drafted with the cooperation of thirteen major car makers US president Obama announced a new program for more fuel efficiency on 29. July. The target for 2025 is 54.5 miles per gallon, corresponding to 4.3 l / 100 km, and 101 g CO2 / km. The objective is on the one hand to unburden the consumers and on the other to decrease the country's dependency on imported oil. The detail of the practical implementation of the program will soon be defined by the authorities involved. Among the steps considered incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles, plug-in hybrides, and fuel cell vehicles were mentioned. (White House communication of 29. July 2011)

7 9 PEOPLE 9.1 WILLIAM ROBERT GROVE William Robert Grove, British physicist and lawyer, was born 200 years ago, on 11. July 1811, in Swansea (Wales). On the basis of work done by Christian Friedrich Schoenbein in Switzerland he realized in 1839 what he called gas battery and is basically the inversion of electrolysis, but we call it fuel cell today. He had a great interest in the electric sciences which were still in their infancy at this time; he developed the Grove element, a type of battery which became a standard for years. He almost discovered the principle of conservaton of energy, but found that he cound not make a living from science, while he could from being lawyer. So he worked as attorney from 1853 (specialized on patent and scientific matters) and was knighted in After his retirement in 1878 he returned to science. He died on 1. August 1896 in London.