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Hydrogen Mirror 6/98

News from Hydrogen and Fuel Cell

compiled by the German Hydrogen Association

 

The topics of issue 6/98:
Hydrogen

 

Fuel Cells

 

Energy And Climate

 

Politics

 

 

 

Hydrogen

 

Europe

The foundation of an European roof organization named "European Hydrogen Association" has been decided on 27. October by representants of the hydrogen associations from France, Italy, Norway, and Germany as well as experts from Greece, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Spain. EHA's task will be to represent the field towards national and supranational institutions in Europe (in particular the European Commission) and elsewhere as well as the information of the public and advice and education for experts and other interested parties.

The European Commission is ready to support the project. The association, however, will be a legal entity independent of the Commission.

Remark: From its very beginning DWV advocated the foundation of a common European association. Joint actions of the European proponents of hydrogen technology is necessary to solve global problems which can not be dealt with except supranationally. (See our press release 7/98)
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Shell
Deutsche Shell will step by step switch their filling stations to renewable fuels from biomass or solar hydrogen. Board member Vahrenholt said in an interview (Focus of 16. November) that an own company is being founded for this purpose. He said that we must start at once with the use of sun, wind, and biomass because it takes 30 or 40 years to establish a new energy carrier. The time horizon of politics is too short. From politics Vahrenholt demanded "reliable support of renewable energies". Many ways of support are conceivable. "Fossil fuels might contribute to financing future energies — maybe by means of a solar penny." Hydrogen cars would not have been developed either if California had not demanded the introduction of emission-free cars. "The final objective must be the solar hydrogen economy." (See also Hydrogen Mirror 4/98)

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Not satisfied
DaimlerChrysler has terminated the work with the Boston team Rodriguez/Baker in July. The common activities on the storage of hydrogen in graphite nanofibers, which were the object of great interest because of the initial and later success stories (s. no. 3/98 and 1/98), did not lead to the desired results, as it was announced by the company. A spokesman confirmed a report of the Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Letter to this effect, but refused to make final statements about whether or not the technology makes sense. DaimlerChrysler continues to monitor this field, on which others are active as well, with great attention.

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Filling station
Six vans with combustion engines, for the time being, are adapted for hydrogen in the framework of the W.E.I.T. project which is made in Hamburg together with Iceland. The filling station which belongs to it will be inaugurated formally on 12. January 1999 by mayor Ortwin Runde. (See also Hydrogen Mirror 6/97)

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Stirred, not shaken
Researchers with Tokyo Institute of Technology say that they have found an uncommon method to split water at ambient temperature (and not at 3000 °C) in its elements: with an ordinary laboratory stirrer and metal oxide powder. In February they had reported that with addition of copper oxide powder (Cu2O) water was split in hydrogen and oxygen under radiation with visible light. Further experiments showed that it worked just as well with other binary metal oxides, e. g. NiO, Co3O4, Fe3O4, not so good with RuO2 and IrO2, and not at all with CuO and Fe2O3 or known photocatalysts as TiO2, ZnO or WO3. Not the light is important, but the stirring. The process continued in complete darkness for a few hundred hours. The efficiency of 5 % is clearly above that from the earlier reports. (See Ikeda et al.: Mechano-catalytic water splitting, Chem. Commun. 1998 p. 2185f; New Scientist, 14. November 1998)

The mechanism behind the effect is not clear. The Japanese group considers the process to be a mechano-calalytic reaction which shows for the first time the immediate conversion of chemical to mechanical energy, without the intermediate step of heat. Friction experts of the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin were less surprised by the effect. They say that the mechano-catalytic splitting of water and other substances is documented in the literature, but usually in connection with other metals or oxides or under additional light radiation. (See e.g. G. Heinicke: Tribochemistry, Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich/Vienna 1984)

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Fuel Cells

 

BMW
The Munich based car manufacturer announced on 20. November during an event of Solar-Wasserstoff Bayern GmbH (SWB) at Neunburg vorm Wald that they investigate the possibility to change all 2000 fork lifts in their factories to electric drives with fuel cells. The decisive thing was the good experience with a test sample operated on the SWB site (see no. 6/97). Fork lifts were said to be the world's greatest market for electric vehicles and therefore particularly well suited for test purposes. The key problem for the general use of hydrogen in road vehicles is still seen in the installation of the infrastructure. Nevertheless hydrogen motors are considered to be an important option in the framework of the energy strategy for the next millenium.

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USA
Leading US fuel cell manufacturers, suppliers, and customers have founded an association called US Fuel Cell Council on 15. October. Founder members are: Ballard Generation Systems, DaimlerChrysler, DuPont Fluoroproducts, Ford Motor Co., International Fuel Cells / ONSI Corp., Plug Power, W. L. Gore & Associates, Siemens / Westinghouse and others.

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Molten carbonate
The first field test of the world for a molten carbonate fuel cell (MCFC) designed according to the "Hot Module" concept of Motoren und Turbinen Union (mtu) at Friedrichshafen will start next year at Bielefeld. The city utility will integrate the plant in the heat supply of the university. The electric power output is 250 kW, the electric efficiency 52 %. The waste heat at about 450 °C will be used for the process heat generation of the university and for the district heating of the city utility. Other partners in the project are BEB Erdgas und Erdoel GmbH and Mobil Erdgas-Erdoel GmbH.

The molten carbonate cell can use natural gas and other fuel gases directly due to its high operating temperature of 600 to 650 °C. It needs no reformer and no cleaning unit to generate hydrogen first under use of energy. This is the reason for the high efficiency. It can be even increased by the energetic use of the high temperature of the waste gas (process heat, turbine).

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Revolution in your basement

In Europe and even more in North America there is a race for the market introduction of small fuel cell plants which can supply homes of one or more families with electricity and heat. These households would be independent of the electric grid and need generally only natural gas.

Vaillant chairman Manfred Ahle expects the fuel cell to replace the conventional boiler in the long run. In an Interview (Sanitaer- und Heizungstechnik, issue 9/1998) he said: "We work with great intensity on the commercial maturity of the fuel cell which can be used in a decentral mode for the heat and electricity co-generation of homes for one or more families." The background of such statements is the deregulation of the energy market in Germany and other important export markets (Great Britain, USA) which causes changes of the structure. Energy utilities for example supply their customers themselves with devices and do the service in an increasing extent. Another important factor for the gas business is the development of the price for electricity. Ahle considers it as decisive for the success of the fuel cell whether or not the individual generation of electricity makes commercially sense before the background of electricity prices expected to go down.

Even clearer than here the trend can be seen in North America, an effect of the further deregulated energy market. Co-generation, however, is not so important there as it is here.

Energy Partners and Epyx together with the energy supplier NUI have developed a 2 kW plant running on natural gas or propane. Epyx contributed the multi-fuel reformer, Energy Partners the cell. The system will be marketed under the name NuPower. (See NUI press release of 16. November 1998)

Northwest Power Systems from Oregon has developed a reformer which can process methanol, propane, or kerosene. It will be integrated in a PEM fuel cell plant with 5 kW output. During a tournee of two weeks at the beginning of December the system was presented to energy suppliers in the northwest of the USA, after having supplied a 200 m2 home in a demonstration experiment. For the duration of the experiment the house was disconnected from the grid.

American Power Corp. (Boston) will sell its plants "like gas boilers" for about 4000 $. The customer will pay 0,06 to 0,07 Euro/kWh for electricity.

Remark: Inconspicuously, but unavoidably a fundamental change of the energy economy starts. Not only will the customers be more independent of the supplier by decentral generation, but the so far well separated worlds of electricity and gas will suddenly turn out for the end user to be just two sides of the same medal.
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Energy and Climate

 

Getting soaked
For some islands in the Pacific the rise of the sea level due to the global heating is not a gloomy perspective, but gloomy reality. A few small islands belonging to Kiribati and Tuvalu have already disappeared, and some roads on the greater ones had to be transferred further inland. The sea water introduces salt in the groundwater which makes increasing areas unsuitable for agriculture. While developed industrial countries will merely suffer a loss of quality of life for their citizens from the sea level rise, it is a matter of life and death e.g. for Tuvalu, said the country's prime minister. The major part of it is not higher than one meter above sea level.

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Record
Considering the temperature records which the year 1998 scored month for month from January to September (see no. 5/98 "Temperature record" and 4/98 "Admonition") we were in for something for the year as a whole. According to a press release of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 1998 was the warmest of the last 1200 years. The heating observed in the whole 20th century is equally unparalleled. No natural mechanism is known which could cause this. Conclusion: "The global heating of the 20th century is a reality and must be taken serious".

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Gasoline price
The US car driver pays about 0.23 Euro/l for the gasoline. After purely commercial calculations it should rather be somewhere between 1.25 and 3.80 Euro/l. An investigation of the International Center for Technology Assessment included about 40 cost factors amounting to almost 1500 billion Euro which are usually accounted for by the public. Among these are direct subsidiaries as well as tax exemptions and similar things, administrative work, protection of the environment and about 50 to 75 billion Euro for the military protection of the supply routes.

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Politics

 

Award
The Federal Minister for the Environment, Trittin, on 8th November awarded one half each of the Environment Award 1998 of the German Environment Foundation to the solar cell manufacturer Georg Salvamoser from Freiburg and to three climate researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. The climatologists received the award for their contributions to numerical modeling of climate processes which made is possible to understand both natural processes (El Niño) as well as such caused by man (greenhouse effect). Federal Reserve Bank president Tiedtmeyer, who is chairman of the board of trustees of the foundation, called the selection of the awarded a quite deliberate signal for climate protection.

In their speech the climate experts appealed to the federal government to abandon the subsidiaries for coal and oil. This would make the transition to an environmental compatible energy supply from renewable sources relatively simple.

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Unheard of
Werner Mueller, new Federal Minister for Economy, appears to take hydrogen energy more serious than his predecessors. While the latter never even bothered to take note of it, former energy manager Mueller said in a newspaper interview in the context of the abolition of nuclear energy: "Electricity is the only future energy, besides hydrogen. Because electricity can be produced from regenerative sources, in the very long run. We must never forget that oil and natural gas will be almost gone in 50 to 100 years". (Hamburger Abendblatt, 25. November 1998)  
Remark: Even we would have problems to say it more beautiful. We look forward to the corresponding actions.
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No risk
During the climate conference at Buenos Aires the USA signed the Kyoto protocol on 12th November as the last industrial country. They could do so without being afraid of having to accept great duties: to become effective for the USA, the protocol would have to be ratified by Congress with a majority of 2/3. Under the prevailing circumstances this appears to be impossible.

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Hydrogen Mirror 6/98
Published by German Hydrogen Association, Berlin
Editor: Ulrich Schmidtchen, Berlin