Thread: The Hydrogen Revolution

The hydrogen revolution

Quieter, cleaner and greener. The petrol-driven car as we know it, is on borrowed time. Rod Myer reports.

There is a quiet revolution taking place in the car industry that will fundamentally change the way we live. Imagine cities without smog. Without oil tankers. With less noise. And all because the new vehicles will be powered on the most common element of all - hydrogen, a constituent part of water.

The world's car manufacturers are spending millions on prototypes of hydrogen cars that they expect to start replacing the petrol car with sometime in the next decade. And they promise it will be cleaner and greener. Supplies of crude oil are expected to begin running down this decade and - with increasing concerns about pollution and global warming - scientists are scrambling to improve the new technology and break the world's dependence on oil.

Australia is part of an enormous body of worldwide research. In the middle of this year, Perth commuters will find themselves using buses powered by hydrogen instead of diesel as part of an international trial that also involves 10 European cities.

Car manufacturer DaimlerChrysler is supplying the buses and funding is coming from a variety of sources, including BP, which is providing the hydrogen. The Federal Government has contributed funds and the Western Australian Government has pledged $10 million.

The three buses will have fewer seats than other buses, and travellers might notice how quiet they are. And, instead of toxic fumes, the vehicles exhaust pipes will emit water vapour, or steam.

For the past 144 years, since former railroad conductor Edwin L. Drake struck oil at his well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, the world has relied on petrol to turn its wheels. But within 20 years, many predict that hydrogen fuel cells will have overtaken the internal combustion engine. Your hot water service and even your mobile phone may be running on hydrogen long before that.

The move is fast gaining momentum. In his State of the Union address of January 28, last year, US President George W. Bush stated that children born on that day could have the choice of a hydrogen-powered car by the time they were 17. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has even promised to build hydrogen fuelling stations every 32 kilometres along major Californian highways.

Iceland has gone further and committed to becoming the world's first hydrogen-based economy within 20 years, planning to convert cars, buses and fishing trawlers to run on the fuel.

In Australia, Resources Minister Ian MacFarlane has thrown his weight behind the development of hydrogen-based technology following a conference in Broome last year. A recent Federal Government report has predicted that 20 per cent of cars and 50 per cent of mobile phones will run on hydrogen by 2028.

As for the oil companies, they are being practical. "We are looking to the long term," says Colin Gomm, BP's director of environmental issues.

"Hydrogen is potentially another fuel source and we look at it with a 20-year time horizon."

Hydrogen research is also taking place in Melbourne. Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd hopes to have a product on the market in 2005 that will provide hot water and electricity for residential users.

Proponents of hydrogen power see its potential as unlimited. They see hydrogen not just as an alternative energy source, but as the foundation of a whole new non-polluting economy. While hydrogen has had some bad publicity over the years - linked as it has been to the H-bomb and the ill-fated airship Hindenburg that crashed and burned in New Jersey in 1937 - researchers say such concerns are misplaced, and endorse the gas as clean, safe and readily available.

So, how would it all work?

Renewable energy sources such as wind and thermal power would be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen would be run through fuel cells to create electricity that could power cars, homes, factories and transport systems. (A fuel cell is simply a battery in reverse; where a battery stores power, a fuel cell creates it through a chemical reaction producing electricity - hydrogen is fed in, power comes out.)

Exhaust fumes would be limited to water vapour, eliminating some of our greenhouse problems.

But there is, of course, a catch. In fact, several. Hydrogen may be the most abundant element in the universe, but you can't go out into Bass Strait and drill a hydrogen well: hydrogen always combines with other elements when left to its own devices.

So you have to manufacture it by breaking down the substances - such as water, coal or gas - where it is stored. The problem is that this process generally uses as much energy as the hydrogen it produces gives out.

It is perhaps unsurprising then that the first moves to commercially produce hydrogen are coming out of the fossil fuel industry - and involve the use of fossil fuels. BP will manufacture hydrogen from natural gas at its Kwinnana refinery for the Perth bus trial and have it refined at the nearby BOC (formerly British Oxygen Company). That process releases carbon into the atmosphere and is therefore not seen as the way forward by environmentalists.

Even more controversial (because it is more polluting) are plans to produce hydrogen from coal. David Brockway a long-time coal researcher who is now chief of the CSIRO's energy technology division, says the transition to the hydrogen economy will be a step by step affair and initially, at least, fossil fuels will play a part.

"Hydrogen will be the preferred energy carrier of the future, but the question is will it be in 20 or 50 years?" Brockway says. "In the short term, producing hydrogen from fossil fuels will be cheaper, either using gas or coal."

Where coal is used, he says, the carbon emitted from the process will have to be sequestered, or pumped into underground storages indefinitely.

In the longer term, the Holy Grail is breaking down water using renewable energy sources, Brockway says. "But it could be decades before these technologies are available."

There is another problem. Hydrogen is the lightest element, which means the atoms that make it up are a long way from each other. That means you need much larger storages for hydrogen-powered vehicles than for conventional petrol or diesel models, and this has huge implications in design.

The Perth trial buses will carry 58 passengers, compared with 70 for diesel models because of the large fuel tanks that must be installed. Transporting hydrogen to service stations will also require more tankers than for an equivalent amount of petrol, meaning more cost and more congestion.

Researchers are working on solutions such as compressing hydrogen into a liquid. BMW is working on a liquid hydrogen fuel tank, but this needs to be kept at minus 270 degrees to prevent the hydrogen vapourising. And the compression of hydrogen increases the energy needed to produce it.

Mark Deisendorf, a researcher and the director of Sydney's Sustainability Centre, believes that the energy dollar would be better spent on boosting renewable energy sources such as wind and solar rather than hydrogen. Cheaper, more efficient ways of storing energy, such as hot rocks or hot water, are already available, he says. "You lose about 50 per cent of the energy used to create hydrogen."

Fans of the hydrogen fuel cell counter that the internal combustion engine has been 100 years in development.

Steve Zorbas, director of the National Hydrogen Association, points to work being done on metal hydrides that can store hydrogen like a sponge stores water. Others argue that Australia spends $9 billion a year subsidising fossil fuels in various ways. Take away these subsidies, they say, and alternative fuels such as hydrogen become more competitive.

Ian Lowe, honorary professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University, and former head of the Commission for Future, is a hydrogen enthusiast. He says Australia is ideally positioned to follow Iceland's example as a leader in hydrogen technology.

Lowe cites a report in New Scientist magazine, nominating Iceland as the "obvious country" for a wide-ranging trial.

"It has a good science and technology base, extensive supplies of renewable energy, and it is an island country so there is no transport interface with other countries. I said at the time ‘It's a pity we didn't have those advantages or we might have been able to do something similar'," says Lowe ironically.

"The difference is they have politicians looking 20 years ahead who can see that by then oil will be scarce or expensive or both."

Other than the Perth bus trial, the only Australian application approaching commercialisation is being developed by Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd in Noble Park. CFC chief executive Allen Conduit says he hopes to be selling fuel-cell powered domestic hot water systems - that also produce electricity to power homes or sell back into the grid - by next year. The only catch is it will be in Europe.

In Australia, Conduit says, "the demand for fuel cells is lagging a bit". Cheap energy prices and the lack of a strong environmental imperative (resulting from the Government's refusal to sign the Kyoto agreement) make fuel cell technology less attractive in the local market, Conduit says.

Even so, he adds, investors including gas producer Woodside, Queensland electricity retailer Energex, CSIRO and BHP Billiton, have poured more than $110 million into the company in the past 10 years.

To the purists, says Conduit, CFC is outside the fold because it uses natural gas as its fuel source. But, he argues, gas is the most efficient way to produce hydrogen at the moment, and that using it in a fuel cell is far more efficient and less polluting than other fossil fuel technologies. "We use natural gas so we're not classified as a renewable energy company. But we are part of a transition to the hydrogen economy. I believe we're a world leader in our field."

The fact that five or six companies internationally are working on similar processes does not concern him. "The market does not exist now but soon it will be so large that I'm not concerned with the prospect of competitors," he says. "They will just help to open the market up."

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...838784511.html