A hydrogen car defined to be an alternative fuel vehicle that uses hydrogen as its onboard fuel for motive power. The term may also refer to a personal transportation vehicle, such as an automobile, or any other vehicle that uses hydrogen in a similar fashion, such as an aircraft. The power plants of such vehicles convert the chemical energy of hydrogen to mechanical energy either by burning hydrogen in an internal combustion engine, or by reacting hydrogen with oxygen in a fuel cell to run electric motors.

The concept of hydrogen car is not new. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) used fuel cells to generate electricity aboard space missions during the 1960s, but Sir William Grove’s invention found little use of hydrogen in any other setting. Geoffrey Ballard, founder of Ballard Power, a dual US-Canadian citizen who was educated in Harvard, turned the promise of a hydrogen-based economy powered by fuel cells into reality, a task that fell to several dozen scientists gathered on the outskirt of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

After dedicating itself to perfecting fuel cells for roughly 15 years and devoting $200 million to the cause, Ballard Power had much to celebrate in 1997 when it became the only company in the world to put a fuel-cell vehicle on the road. It delivered three fuel-cell powered buses to the Chicago Transit Authority (Public transportation became the first market for the company’s fuel cells). By 1997, 11 of the leading car manufacturers were developing emission-free, fuel-cell drive trains, and eight of those manufacturers were working with Ballard Power, led by Daimler-Benz AG, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz that invested $325 million for a 20 percent stake in Ballard Power. Before the end of the year, Ford Motor Co. followed suit, investing $420 million for a 15 percent stake in the company. Together, the three partners were investing nearly $1 billion in the belief that fuel cells would power the cars of the future.

In 2003, DaimlerChrysler delivered to public transportation authorities in Madrid the first zero-emission Mercedes-Benz Citaro Bus, powered with a Ballard fuel-cell engine. The bus was the first of 30 buses to be delivered by 2004 to nine other European cities: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Hamburg, London, Luxembourg, Porto, Reykjavik, Stockholm, and Stuttgart.

After supplying and supporting Ballard fuel cell engines all over the world, Ballard Power in the partnerships with other partners delivered a fleet of hydrogen powered and zero-emission transit buses for the 2010 Olympics, making the City of Whistler the world’s largest fleet of hydrogen fuel cells buses. BC Transit operated these buses during the 2010 Olympics and Paralympic Winter Games with hydrogen fuelling stations in Whistler, Victoria, and the University of British Columbia.

It is no secret that there are already many hydrogen cars on the road. Typically, these hydrogen cars are used as fleet vehicles in California, Japan, Canada, and the European Union.

It was indeed a great help when President Bush signed a $1.2 billion deal over five years in 2003 to help fund research into hydrogen power with the objective that in 2015, the Energy Hydrogen Program will make a decision on commercializing hydrogen powered fuels cells to power vehicles and make infrastructure to fuel them. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was pushing to get 200 hydrogen fuelling stations built by 2010 stretching from Vancouver all the way down to Baja, California.

The critical component of hydrogen cars is the infrastructure of hydrogen fuel stations on the hydrogen highways. The hydrogen fuelling stations of the future could very well be both, standalone ports or a complementary part of current gasoline stations.

California’s first hydrogen fuel station open to the public was on April 13, 2004 in Diamond Bar in the southern part of the state. Since then, California has 23 active hydrogen fuel stations across the state that are providing fuelling service to 158 fleet vehicles on a regular basis. Currently, there are 14 more fuel stations under construction.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) hosts the Stuart Energy SES-f hydrogen fuelling station, which has attracted international attention from the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Belize, Switzerland, Philippines, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, China, South Africa, Latvia, and the Republic of Georgia. The Stuart Energy Station was also chosen by Toyota to provide hydrogen-fuelling infrastructure to its headquarters in Torrance, California.

Other hydrogen fuelling stations across the world include those in Germany, Lisbon, Sweden, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Luxemburg, Portugal, Spain, Iceland, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Canada, Italy, Belgium, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. Here is the link to a comprehensive Worldwide Hydrogen Fuelling Stations that describes the availability of hundreds of hydrogen fuelling stations by the country and by the city.

It is interesting to note that besides commercial fuelling stations, the future may hold that home hydrogen fuelling stations become commonplace. By the process of electrolysis, an electrical current can split tap water into hydrogen and oxygen, thus making it possible to fuel up your car at home before you hit the road.

It was reported, on the website that there are many issues that need to be worked out with hydrogen fuelling stations as they relate to hydrogen car technology. For instance, currently, there are two kinds of hydrogen cars. One car uses hydrogen fuel cells and the other car uses an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) to burn hydrogen. A hybrid car also exists that switches back and forth between gasoline and hydrogen ICE’s. Some hydrogen cars currently use compressed H2 while others use liquid hydrogen. Issues of storage, containment, delivery and safety all need to be addressed before hydrogen fuel stations become commonplace in the consumer market.

As far as hydrogen is concerned, there is a misconception about hydrogen being a fuel, which is not true. In fact, hydrogen is an energy carrier like electricity, gasoline, diesel fuel, and natural gas converted from the primary energy sources such as coal, petroleum, underground methane sources, and nuclear energy. The main attributes of energy carriers are to store, transport, and deliver energy in a usable form to industrial, commercial, residential, and transportation end-users. For instance, converting energy into electricity makes it easier to transport and use electricity for splitting atom, building a dam, or burning coal or to run television and appliances. At the same time, hydrogen is a highly efficient and low polluting energy carrier that is used for transportation, heating, and power generation in places where it is difficult to use electricity.

It has been a dream for visionaries for decades to visualize an economy driven by hydrogen where an energy distribution system based on hydrogen as the energy carrier and where hydrogen used as an efficient transportation fuel to reducing greenhouse gas emissions significantly. However, the biggest obstacle for producing hydrogen is the cost. A typical way of producing hydrogen is by electrolysis—splitting water into its basic elements – hydrogen and oxygen. Electrolysis involves passing an electric current through water to separate the atoms (2H2O + electricity = 2H2 + O2). Electrolysis also is a mature technology and used primarily for the production of high purity oxygen and hydrogen. Electricity from renewable sources can power the process, but it is very expensive at this time. It is noted from various reports that hydrogen from electrolysis is ten times more costly than natural gas and three times more costly than gasoline per Btu. If nuclear-derived process heat is utilized for heating water to spilt hydrogen, it will reduce generated per unit of hydrogen produced and it will be significantly cheaper.

Furthermore, the current common hydrogen separation processes use fossil fuels to raise the temperature high enough to separate hydrogen from either water or natural gas. Unfortunately, this process is not environmental friendly. It releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide (CO2) as a by product of natural gas separation and oxygen as a by product of water separation. Consequently, while cars running on hydrogen fuel are carbon free, the production of hydrogen itself is not.

Here is the dilemma:

• It is true that if electricity generated by nuclear reactors is used to raise the temperature for separating hydrogen from either water or natural gas, there will be no greenhouse gas emitted in the atmosphere. However, the process becomes very expensive;
  
• Realizing the fact that the energy produced by nuclear reactors may come in the form of heat or electricity, it would be cheaper to use nuclear heat instead of nuclear electricity to separate hydrogen from either water or natural gas; and
  
• But, given the fact that current reactors put out only about 3000 megawatt thermal (MWt) and the use of heat from nuclear reactors requires 1600 MWt for efficient hydrogen production, therefore, it is suggested that the removal of such a huge chunk of heat from nuclear reactors would lessen the efficiency of electricity production.
  

Here is a possible solution based on the research:

• Invent nuclear reactors with the capability to produce much more than 3000 MWt power;
  
• Find ways to minimizing the requirement of 1600 MWt for producing efficient hydrogen; and
  
• Do the both.
  

Recognizing the potential for hydrogen to be a dominant energy carrier of the future sustainable energy supply system, the nuclear countries around the world are concentrating on building advanced nuclear reactors (Generation IV) with huge capacity, focusing on sustainability, economics, safety and reliability, and proliferation resistance and physical protection. Here is an example of those efforts:

The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in Idaho is building a new nuclear reactor near Arco, Idaho (population approximately 1,000), which will create both electricity and hydrogen for commercial use. The construction of the fourth generation, Very High Temperature Reactor, is part of the Department of Transportation (DOE) $8 million award for initial engineering studies.

The actual costs of the project to construct the nuclear reactor is estimated to be at $2.4 billion. The nuclear reaction will operate at temperatures up to 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, which is three times the heat of the current third generation reactors. The INL reactor will be the first in the U. S. geared towards generating both electricity and hydrogen for commercial uses and is expected to be a showcase on the world stage for these capabilities.

Japan, Germany and South Africa are also currently working on a Generation-IV thermochemical cracking nuclear reactor as well. The process of thermochemical cracking involves heating water to very high temperatures (1,600+ degrees Fahrenheit) and adding a chemical agent, which can be recycled, in order to create hydrogen and oxygen.

The Nuclear Hydrogen R&D Plan that was included in the National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap prepared by the US Department of Energy (DOE), defined the research necessary to develop hydrogen energy by 2017. It acknowledged the significance of technical challenges to the development of large-scale, cost-effective production options but at the same time, it indicated the confidence in the identified promising approaches, which meet the DOE objectives of emissions free production based on domestic resources. Of course, the fundamental challenge is to focus finite research resources on processes that have the highest probability of producing hydrogen at costs that are competitive with gasoline. Both thermochemical cycles and high-temperature electrolysis methods are identified as having the potential to achieve this objective.

Here is the graphical representation of the roadmap for the development of the hydrogen economy:

mirali@aimamc.com