Hydrogen News

Lake Constance

During the next ten years Lake Constance will become a centre of fuel cell tests in Germany. A hydrogen infrastructure will be created at the shore of the lake to supply boats and light vehicles with the fuel. At the International Gardening Exhibition in 2017 a considerable number of fuel cell vehicles could be operating in the whole region, according to the initiators of the project. Drives for boats and land vehicles with outputs between 2 and more than 50 kW will be developed and tested in three phases.

The project is performed by the Competence and Innovation Center Fuel Cells Baden-Wuerttemberg (KIBZ), Esslingen University and the engineering company SWES from Stuttgart.

Opel

Press releases from early July say that General Motors will present the GM HydroGen 4 during the Frankfurt Car Fair in September. Ten of the vehicles will be tested in Berlin next year.

Speed record

Ford announces a speed record for hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles. The Ford Fusion Hydrogen 999 achieved 333,6 km/h. Ford invested more than one year of work into the car which is based on the serial type.

(Ford press release of 15. August 2007)

Railway

The Danish private railway company VLTJ, running a small network connecting a few cities on the Danish mainland, intends to let the trains run on wind power and hydrogen. There are numerous wind turbines in the region. A part of the irregular power supply must for grid management reasons be converted into a form which can be stored, for example hydrogen by electrolysis. A demonstration train running on hydrogen will be set on the track in the framework of an EU project. One of the great wind turbines would deliver enough power for the energy demand of the train which is suitable for the test because it is not very long. Another short term source is hydrogen from a chemical plant. Some technical details are not yet settled, like the power storage on board and the type of fuel cell. But the participants are confident that such a train will be on the rails by 2010.

(Tages-Anzeiger, 1. August 2007)

BMW

During the past four months BMW has given its small hydrogen fleet in the hands of a number of prominent test drivers. First in the line was Michael Glos, federal minister for economy. Numerous people from politics and economy followed. Actors like Richard Gere and Sharon Stone came with a hydrogen car to important events, also Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie or the director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. The Russian singer Anna Netrebko drove a BMW Hydrogen 7 during its tour through Germany this summer. Meanwhile the prominent drivers have covered a distance of more than 2 million km with the cars (BMW press release of 26. July 2007). Even Prince Charles has now tried a car of this kind. He did so on occasion of the start of the Brighton-to-London Eco-Car Rally in which only vehicles with ecological and future oriented drives participated.

Iceland

Since July 11 the two Icelandic power companies Landsvirkjun and Reykjavik Energy are running the first fuel cell car on Iceland in everyday operation. A DaimlerChrysler F-Cell became part of the regular fleet for one year. Another vehicle of this type will follow early in 2008.

(DaimlerChrysler press release of 11. July 2007)

Honda

A race track on the Swedish island of Gotland was the site of the European premiere of Honda's latest concept car FCX. Beginning in 2008 the car will be produced in limited numbers and be tested by customers in the USA and Japan. The efficiency is about 60 %, 10 % more than in the last version. The new stack delivers 14 kW more than the old one though it is smaller by 20 % and lighter by 30 %. The drive as a whole is 180 kg lighter and 40 % smaller than the previous one. The maximum speed is 160 km/h, the range is 570 km. Another improvement concerns the cold start properties: now the car will start even at -30 °C.

(Press release of 27. June 2007)

Storage

The sun does not shine all the time, which is why solar power units are usually combined with a battery. This is rather inefficient for long periods because of the charge loss of a battery (5 … 10 % / month). The Austrian company Fronius now uses an electrolyser for this purpose. The stored hydrogen is fed into a fuel cell with an alternator according to demand. The water generated by the cell goes back to the electrolyser. First test plants are operating, for example in the city of Steyr where a measuring point for environment data is supplied with power all the year by means of a photovoltaic unit and a fuel cell. The main advantage of the backup solution is that 2/3 of the PV generator capacity can be saved and the battery capacity is reduced considerably.

(Press release of 2. August 2007)

Canada

Installing hydrogen plants of all kinds in Canada will be easier now. The Bureau de Normalisation du Québec (BNQ) has now published the Canadian Hydrogen Installation Code (CHIC). It contains advice for safe plant design and is intended to accelerate the approval procedures, something which is sometimes rather tedious up to now.

(BNQ press release of 3. July 2007)

Fuel Cells

Minicar

A Danish group will introduce a minicar running on fuel cells in the market until 2008/2009. It is based on the electric car Kewet which has two or three seats and is already being produced in Norway. The car is driven by an electric motor with 13 kW which gets its power from a PEM fuel cell. The latter is coupled with a lithium ion buffer battery. The tank is filled with gaseous hydrogen which costs about 14 € each time. This means that the fuel costs are of the same order of magnitude as for a car with a common gas motor. The engineers estimate that the cost for a serial car will be about 27,000 €, if it will ever become a serial car. They think that with increasing numbers the price per car will drop.

Mobile homes

Mobile homes of the upper price class are meanwhile equipped with fuel cells quite normally. So we hear from the fuel cell company SFC Smart Fuel Cell which now cooperates with three producers of mobile homes. Direct methanol fuel cells with output powers of 25, 50, or 65 W are used. They can provide between 600 and 1600 Wh of energy per day. A 10 l cartridge will be enough for almost six days even at maximum output.

Auxiliary power

At the end of the year the British company Voller Energy will start marketing fuel cell systems for off-grid power supply. They are meant to be used in office containers, on yachts, or in large mobile homes. Three prototypes are already in operation in these three fields of application. Voller is aiming at niche markets where the advantages of fuel cell technology compensate the still high costs. The systems will run on propane or propane / butane mixtures as they are used for camping stoves. Thus a fuel is used which has already an infrastructure.

Masterflex

Masterflex Brennstoffzellentechnik GmbH has received a major order to deliver 14,000 electric bicycles. According to a press release the company sees itself as clear technology leader in the field of producing key components for electric bikes. This year Masterflex AG presented already the Cargobike which is ready for serial production and has an innovative and stable fuel cell drive.

(Press release of 20. July 2007)

Energy and Climate

Biomass

About one quarter of the biomass production on earth is already used by man. A recent study by scientists from Vienna and Potsdam says that the plants of the earth can in principle generate 15.6 trillion kg carbon per year. 23.8 % of this potential are already used by man: some 53 % are harvested directly in agriculture, 40 % are for pastures, woods and settlements, roads, and other modifications of vegetation, while finally about 7 % are consumed in fires. No other species on earth is changing the ecosystem of the earth to such an extent. This must be considered in calculations on how much fossil fuels could be substituted by biomass.

(H. Haberl et al., PNAS 104 (2007) 12942-7)

Less for more

Will German car makers be able to reduce the CO₂ emissions of their cars from a mean value of 161 g/km today to 130 g/km, which will be compelling in the EU by 2012? It is possible, but expensive, according to a recent study by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. And it requires that all available ways to do it are used at once. „The emission target of 130 g/km for the European fleet is feasible — but at a very high price ", according to a company spokesman. These costs will be a few 100 up to a few 1000 € per car, with the average between 500 and 1000 € per car. „The problem is that customers are not willing to pay more for sustainable products. Which to a large extent is due to the fact that the trend to more sustainability was almost not addressed in marketing communication and brand positioning.“ Most car makers also lacking internal competence to master the new challenges.

(Press release of 16. August 2007)

IEA

In unparalleled terms the International Energy Agency (IEA) has outlined the risks for the oil supply. In its mean term oil market report it warns that oil might become extremely scarce during the five years to come. Everything indicates a supply crisis which could drive the prices to all time highs. The reason is that the oil supply from regions like the North Sea or Mexico drops stronger than expected, while new projects like in Russia do not proceed as necessary. At the same time there is an increasing demand from countries like China and India. IEA says that the supply from non-OPEC countries will rise by only 1 % per year, while the global oil demand will increase by 2.2 % per year during the five years to come. It looks even worse for gas: some forecasts predict even scarcer natural gas markets towards the end of the decade.

(Financial Times, 10. July 2007)

Politics

Greenland

Federal Chancellor Merkel made a two day visit to Greenland together with environment minister Sigmar Gabriel. The trip was a demonstration of climate change. So an ice fjord near the city of Ilulissat in the west of Greenland was the most important stop in the program. While the chancellor was deeply moved by the beauty of the scenery, the traces of climate change are the more disturbing. The volume of the glacier has decreased enormously in recent years. Its flow velocity is now 20 m per day. The Greenland trip was the first of a series of visits abroad during which the chancellor will concentrate on climate protection.

Alliance

Research Center Juelich and RWTH University Aachen have founded the Juelich-Aachen Research Alliance (JARA) on 6. August. They intend to create a model of a partnership in research inside and outside universities. The alliance will start in the fields of neuroscience, information technology, and simulation science. The next section to be created will be energy research. Both institutions have a name for their important contributions to fuel cell research and development.

(Press release of 6. August 2007)

What else we have found ...

Bad ride

When the German federal government had a special meeting in the city of Meseberg on 23. August VDV (Association of German Transport Undertakings) provided a hydrogen bus from the fleet operating for Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) for environment minister Gabriel. Gabriel intended to take as many other ministers as possible with him. But it appears that the colleagues had other ideas, and nobody agreed. At the end Gabriel would have been he only minister on the bus, and he did not like this either. So he arrived at Meseberg quite conventional with his car. But the bus travelled nevertheless. It carried journalists and representatives of VDV and BVG.

Remark: A great coalition usually agrees on the least common denominator.