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Hydrogen Mirror 3/98

News from Hydrogen and Fuel Cell

compiled by the German Hydrogen Association

 

The topics of issue 3/98:
Hydrogen

 

Fuel Cells

 

Energy And Climate

 

Politics

 

And What Else Have We Found...

 

Further Reading

 

 

 

Hydrogen

 

Graphite fibers
The Boston Chemists Rodriguez and Baker have published details about their method to store astonishing amounts of hydrogen in graphite nanofibers. The effect is said to be based on the special geometry of the fibers and of the cloud of delocalized pi-electrons which is typical for graphite. Add to this strong interactions of the hydrogen molecules with the graphite and among each other, which could lead to ambient temperature condensation inside the structures. The retrieved amounts are 10 to 20 % below the stored. The rest is not released until at higher temperatures. Amounts of 20 to 100 g of fiber material can meanwhile be produced regularly. Daimler-Benz continues to support the work. (A. Chambers, C. Park, R. T. K. Baker, N. M. Rodriguez: "Hydrogen Storage in Graphite Nanofibers", J. Physical Chemistry B 102 (1998) 4253-6. See also "Hydrogen Supersponges" in Chem. Eng. News of 25. May, R. T. K. Baker: "Synthesis, Properties and Applications of Graphite Nanofibers", presented to the "WTEC Workshop on R&D Status and Trends in Nanoparticles ...", 08.,09.05.97 and "Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Letter" of June 1998)

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Iceland
The island in the North Atlantic is to become a forum for the introduction of hydrogen and other alternative fuels in a developed national economy. A working group consisting of members from industry, research, and authorities under leadership of a member of parliament is mainly concerned with ways to introduce hydrogen in traffic. Hydrogen production will be from hydropower by means of electrolysis. There are negotiations with Daimler-Benz and Ballard about the operation of fuel cell buses in Reykjavik. The long-term objective is to convert mobility of the whole Icelandic society to hydrogen fuel. The considerable fishing fleet as well is to be used to home-made fuel, as it consumes 30 % of the imported oil. Energy can also be imported in form of hydrogen. A first agreement about this with German partners has been made as part of the Hamburg demonstration project W.E.I.T (see no. 6/97 "Hydrogen project in Hamburg").

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Tandem
A semiconductor component has been developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado (USA) which combines the functions of solar cell and electrolyser. The efficiency of the laboratory model is 12.4 %, twice that of the two-stage process photovoltaics + electrolysis. (O. Khaselev, J. A. Turner: "A Monolithic Photovoltaic-Photoelectrochemical Device for Hydrogen Production via Water Splitting", Science 280:382, 425-7; see also the NREL press release)

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Cryoplane
The DASA management has given a clear sign in favor of the DASA/Tupolev project of a demonstrator of a commercial aircraft running on hydrogen by providing the necessary funds. Support from the budget of the federation and various countries have been applied for or are being prepared. The first flight  of a demonstrator with one converted engine could be 2002 according to the present plans.

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New partners
The founding meeting of the Swedish Hydrogen Association (SHA) was held on 26. March in Stockholm.

The "Association Française de l'Hydrogène" (AFH) was founded on 30. April in Paris. Among the founder members were companies like Air Liquide, the French daughters of Air Products and Linde and the aerospace company SEP.

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Hanover Fair 98
The joint presentation "Hydrogen and Fuel Cells" had the success which it is already used to. The number of exhibitors reached an unparalleled 32. The exhibitors showed themselves very satisfied. The media echo was very good. The plans for the jubilee exhibition 1999 are now being made. Interested parties are asked to contact the organizers as soon as possible. DWV is again part of it.

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Energy from problem waste
A method to gasify organic problem waste was presented by the company Euro-Innovation S.A. (Wickrange) from Luxembourg on the Hanover Fair. Transformator oil, frying fat, paint etc. become a gas consisting of about 95 % hydrogen, the rest being mainly methane. Now the company looks for customers who can make good use of the process.

A similar thing in greater scale is done by Berliner Wasserbetriebe who produce methanol at the "Secondary Raw Material Exploitation Center" (SVZ) at Schwarze Pumpe. Railway ties, polymeric parts, and all kinds of waste are turned to a synthesis gas in a closed process and this again to methanol, electricity, and heat. 220.000 t solid and 50.000 t liquid waste per year become 75 MW electricity and 100.000 t methanol.

One potential customer is the fuel cell car. Daimler-Benz wants to become independent of fossil fuels once they produce 100.000 or more cars per year. A car manufacturer has already a lot of organic waste to get rid of, so that interesting possibilities rise ("Make fuel from my waste"). The processes can be converted to hydrogen without major problems.

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Fuel Cells

 

Saxony
Saxony's ministry for the environment intends to turn the city of Taucha near Leipzig into an "Ecological Model City". Zwick's Settlement, a housing project from the 30s, will be equipped with an environmentally compatible and innovative central heat supply to replace the 1500 individual lignite fired ovens. The ministry has issued a call for ideas. Interested engineering companies and plant manufacturers are to submit a suitable preliminary planning until 24. July. (Contact: Saechsisches Staatsministerium fuer Umwelt und Landesentwicklung, Referat 42, P.O. Box 12 01 21, 01002 Dresden).

Such a case lends itself excellently to the use of fuel cells. The settlement is not connected to the heating grid, but has natural gas, so that solutions according to the pattern of Hamburg are possible (see no. 5/97 "Hamburg" and our press release).

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Ballard in Japan
Ballard Generation Systems and EBARA from Tokyo have decided to found a joint company which will do the exclusive marketing and later also production of Ballard's stationary PEM plants in Japan. Both sides will invest 31 M$. After GPU International in North America and GEC Alsthom  in Europe EBARA is Ballard's third strategic partner for stationary plants (see Ballard press release ).

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Just married
The partnership between Daimler-Benz, Ford, and Ballard for the development of fuel cell vehicles has been made official on 7. April at Basle by the signatures under the contracts. All together will invest more than 700 M$ (650 MEuro). Not yet known is the effect the merger Daimler/Chrysler will have. Chrysler had similar plans anyway. There could be some shifts in the distribution of jobs. Mazda, Mobil, and BASF have parts of different importance in the program.

Toyota has denied Japanese newspaper reports (Nihon Keizai Shimbun of 12. June) according to which the company will cooperate with General Motors on the field of the development of environmentally compatible cars, in particular such with fuel cells, to form a counterweight to the alliance of Daimler/Ford/Ballard. It was said that there is no such comprehensive agreement. Both companies, however, jointly develop certain components for electric cars.

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UBA
An expert discussion about fuel cells with about 50 invited experts was held on 18. and 19. May at the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) at Berlin. There was broad agreement about their application in heating stations and other stationary devices. UBA's traffic experts, however, are very much against its mobile application. They prefer combustion engines, in particular those running on natural gas, and measures to reduce consumption. For this reason the discussion between UBA and most of the invitees about mobile application were unusually controversial. It is said that UBA did not succeed to find much support for its position in this point.

UBA president Andreas Troge stressed in a newspaper interview (Berliner Zeitung of 5. May) that nobody had "stated categorically that the fuel cell technology makes no sense in vehicles". NECAR still generates as much CO2 as Greenpeace's Smile and costs five times as much. This, however, might very well change. Today's results can not be taken for eternity. The battery car is certainly no alternative.  

Remark: DWV has published a statement on the matter of the fuel cell for transportation which you will find on our internet site among the press releases.
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Energy and Climate

 

Initiative
Matthias Wissmann, federal minister for transportation, presented on 11. May at Bonn the initiative "Verkehrswirtschaftliche Energiestrategie" which he had already announced in January (see no. 1/98 "Wissmann's objectives" and press release of BMV). The intention is to identify the one or two most promising alternative fuels until the end of 1999 and then find common strategies for their market introduction. Participants are BMW, Daimler-Benz, MAN, and VW as well as ARAL, RWE, and Shell. The decisions for the use of alternative energy technologies must be made early with before the background of the further increasing traffic and the necessity to use the finite resources reasonably.

Many participants see hydrogen as one of the top candidates. This became particularly apparent in the statement of Rainer Laufs, chairman of Deutsche Shell, who said: "... Also hydrogen — seen by many as the energy form of the future — will increasingly contribute to energy and fuel supply provided we do our part accordingly."

BMW board member Teltschik pointed out: "We know for certain that in future we will use one or two driving systems out of the following alternatives: combustion engine with natural gas or hydrogen, or electric drive with battery or fuel cell, or hybrid drive as combination of combustion engine or electric drive. ... We have no guarantee for success, but we must start."

Daimler-Benz board member Cordes meant that challenges are foreseeable "which we can not master simply by optimizing what we have, but by means of solutions pointing the way to the future".

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This is not the way
The German energy economy could achieve the objective of a sustainable energy system even today if it would make use of its technical potential. Their application, however, is "limited by economical interests, social demands, and traditional consumption patterns." "Economic maneuvering space for a sustainable development are not used except on a small scale." This is the result made by the Prognos Institute at Basle for the federal ministry of economy. It says further that "the acting parties in the energy sector, though they are aware of development chances which might be much better and safer in the long run, ... make suboptimal investment and energy consumption decisions under the pressure of daily success. ... Making optimal use of the short-term options dominates over the search for a long-term optimum which would have to be realized jointly".

About the energy prices the study states: "Competing suppliers and consumers adapt the pattern of energy offer and use to prices which are distorted by subsidiaries and by the lack of allocation of costs to those who cause them." "The risks of energy use by emissions and damage to growth have so far had almost no influence on supply and demand of energy carriers." "The energy sector and the boundary conditions dominating its development are not long-term stable any more." (The study will be published at Physica.)

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Politics

 

New wine into old bottles
Ecological energy is apparently only hydropower and modern coal technology, at least for the World bank. This is the impression from the current draft of its strategy paper "Fuel for Thought: A New Environmental Strategy For The Energy Sector". Saving energy, renewable primary energies, and even natural gas are noted only marginally, hydrogen and fuel cells not at all. This contradicts World Bank's own principles for investments in the energy sector.

The U.S. Business Council for Sustainable Energy has pointed out these shortcomings in a letter to World Bank president Wolfensohn dated 17. April which was signed also by DWV and other organizations. Some demands in detail:

  • Rational energy use, decentral generation, renewable energy, and natural gas must get a higher priority than coal.
  • The draft shall state an explicit quota for investments in renewable energies.
  • Projects and their results must be accessible for the public, and the World Bank shall report about the progress on a regular basis.

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And What Else Have We Found...

 

No half job

The city of Constance inherited some money from which it could buy a new car for the mayor. The money was left under the condition that the car had to be a Mercedes. One member of the city council proposed to ask in Stuttgart whether a fuel cell type would be available for the 35.000 Euro they could spend. She was said to have caused a certain lack of understanding on the side of her colleagues. (Stuttgarter Nachrichten of 2. May)  

Remark: When the enthusiasm is already like this, the market introduction of NECAR in 2005 or so can hardly cause too great problems.
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Further Reading

 

Der Zukunft verpflichtet
Editor: Ludwig Boelkow Stiftung. This book contains the speeches given on 30. June 1997 in Munich during a ceremony by Daimler-Benz Aerospace AG to the honor of DWV co-founder Ludwig Boelkow on occasion of his 85th birthday. (Published by Maecenata Verlag, Munich; 167 pages, 35 DM. Distribution by Ludwig Auer GmbH, P.O. Box 1152, 86601 Donauwoerth, phone (+49-906) 73-0, Fax -177)

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Hydrogen Mirror 3/98
Published by German Hydrogen Association, Berlin
Editor: Dr. Ulrich Schmidtchen, Berlin