Hydrogen storage...less science fiction;but with reality and challenges for future

[oneoff]

from energy.gov

HYDROGEN STORAGE

The Fuel Cell Technologies Office (FCTO) is developing onboard automotive hydrogen storage systems that allow for a driving range of more than 300 miles while meeting cost, safety, and performance requirements.

WHY STUDY HYDROGEN STORAGE
Hydrogen storage is a key enabling technology for the advancement of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies in applications including stationary power, portable power, and transportation. Hydrogen has the highest energy per mass of any fuel; however, its low ambient temperature density results in a low energy per unit volume, therefore requiring the development of advanced storage methods that have potential for higher energy density.

HOW HYDROGEN STORAGE WORKS
Hydrogen can be stored physically as either a gas or a liquid. Storage of hydrogen as a gas typically requires high-pressure tanks (350–700 bar [5,000–10,000 psi] tank pressure). Storage of hydrogen as a liquid requires cryogenic temperatures because the boiling point of hydrogen at one atmosphere pressure is −252.8°C. Hydrogen can also be stored on the surfaces of solids (by adsorption) or within solids (by absorption).

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT GOALS
FCTO conducts research and development activities to advance hydrogen storage systems technology and develop novel hydrogen storage materials. The goal is to provide adequate hydrogen storage to meet the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) hydrogen storage targets for onboard light-duty vehicle, material-handling equipment, and portable power applications. By 2020, FCTO aims to develop and verify onboard automotive hydrogen storage systems achieving targets that will allow hydrogen-fueled vehicle platforms to meet customer performance expectations for range, passenger and cargo space, refueling time, and overall vehicle performance. Specific system targets include the following:

1.8 kWh/kg system (5.5 wt.% hydrogen)
1.3 kWh/L system (0.040 kg hydrogen/L)
$10/kWh ($333/kg stored hydrogen capacity).
The collaborative Hydrogen Storage Engineering Center of Excellence conducts analysis activities to determine the current status of materials-based storage system technologies.

The Hydrogen Materials—Advanced Research Consortium (HyMARC) conducts foundational research to understand the interaction of hydrogen with materials in relation to the formation and release of hydrogen from hydrogen storage materials.

Related links provide details about DOE-funded hydrogen storage activities.

CHALLENGES
High density hydrogen storage is a challenge for stationary and portable applications and remains a significant challenge for transportation applications. Presently available storage options typically require large-volume systems that store hydrogen in gaseous form. This is less of an issue for stationary applications, where the footprint of compressed gas tanks may be less critical.

[oneoff]

Thats just the tip of the iceberg.. Cant seem to post the rest of summary, charts etc, but visit site by googling..........hydrogen storage


So some of the ways to store hydogen (H2) ....which by the way has great energy mass; but the kicker always is that volumetric storage is comparatively kinda poor....so we need one of probably three ways to store it.

We all understand compression. A pretty good air compressor will give you 175 psi with only a couple stages of cylinders. I've noticed the more expensive compresors cost much more; but like the Caterpillar salesmen say "There equipment costs more than competition...but its worth every cent" And the compressora tank that costs a few hundred bucks. Move up to something like oxygen at a 2000 psi (or so) into a tank that strong men can manhandle and not too many have the transfill equipment and certainly not the compressor. They won't hardly sell you that tank or equipment; and there are pressure test and rules about even filling expired vessels etc. Not like your old jerry can

But we're only a fifth of the way there for what hydrogen needs at 5 to 10 thousand psi. And I couldn't findone surplus (or new one ) on eBay; so they may be priceless

So getting a little more down to what is "comparable" and currently feasible and available, and at a size that is a more than experimenting with recharging a cell phone at a couple watt rate; lets talk about compressed natural gas. They have been around for a couple of decades; literally millions of full size buses, heavy trucks, even a few transit vehicles etc. Regina (but maybe most sold for pennies on dollar at McDougall Actions etc) but they are viable in many parts of world. Just didn't seem to catch on or work out in North America for a combination of many reasons including refuelling available, and on vehicle storage etc.

But if you look hard and have some 10,000 dollar bills you could start to set up your own system (used, not new) connected to your Sask Energy natural gas service. When you catch on that what looks like a hydraulic coupler (maybe used) costs $300.00 US (minimum) and the Parker or Swagelock 3500# rated 1/4 stainless steel fitting ain't in stock except in the rarest distributor (cost $20.00 or so no matter where you look); and all interconnecting lines and hoses are 5000 pound rated; you catch on that this is serious and not something most will do themselves.


Moving up to a HYDROGEN system and you're talking 10,000 psi spec.

There ain't no ebay type sources, the supplier is gonna say it isn't in stock and as farmers know; four times what you think is the maximum they would dare quote as a price.....is going to be a few times short of what the real price is going to be.


And just to emphasize to those who still can't accept that a hose crimper and hydaulic fiiting isn't a replacement, or worse still; for those who know that with mass production the price will be less than you could imagine....it never happens except for a few examples with third world produced electronics etc.

For specialized critical specifications and quality control where there is no room for mistakes; you get what you pay for. And research and new state of the art technology is costly and somebodies got to pay for every last cent of its development. Not to mention all the scrap and decommissioning of both failed projects (like carbon capture) and technology left by the side of the road (like 50% of Sask electrical generating capacity.

Geez. And yes there is research into fibres for tanks that don't exist and yes few have ever seen a 10,000 psi tank and no the Space shuttle probably used cryogenic hydrogen storage and minus 250 degree (or so) is another new ball game and yes there is research into metal halides etc which may well be what chucks new hydrogen truck will have when and if the process gets past prototypes and then its hoped for the truck driver sake that some hot water process to release the hydrogen from the storage tank isn't required. Just to clarify for the chuck types...it is col out tonight and even summer diesel can ruin a day; and complications like even DEF will ruin a persons day (or week. Hope the correlations and examples are simple enough to be clear.

Its all in the little details that are omitted from the sales literature I guess way better to just wow suckers with pie in the sky (eg a million miles of free hydrogen...but that too was followed by a asterisk that didn't lead to the details. Probably the refilling station is on the next planet just a little short of the 1000 mile range of the artists rendering of the vehicle for sale (at how many hundred thousand was that) and what I guess the century of delivery wasn't real firm. I guess trades not accepted; and also wonder if lenders will initially be willing to take the risk at zero per cent interest rates. I wouldn't.

Not yet ready yet?

[sumdumguy]

I was surprised to find out that 95% of hydrogen is made from wood or fossil fuels.

[chuckChuck]

There are already 3 companies Honda, Hyundai, and Toyota that have hydrogen fuel cell cars on the road in the US primarily in California.

There are significant challenges with fuel cell technology but when most new technology is developed it takes awhile for it be affordable, convenient and widely adopted.

When I was born in the 1960s computers were non existent in homes, and the internet and smart phones only existed in science fiction.

How many of us thought we would all be using GPS and auto steering on our tractors and farm equipment.

Since hydrogen fuel cell technology already exists in the real world it is hard to argue that this technology can't be developed.

Take a look at the following link as it discusses the technology and looks at the 3 models to choose from.

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/fuelcell.shtml

[biglentil]

It will never be safe nor practical. Never ever its a crazy pipe dream. Could you imagine the chain reaction of a 10000psi hydogen tank exploding in traffic? Energy density of hydrogen is extremely low compressing any gas to 10000psi is never efficient nor safe never will be. Then to top it off the very process of producing the hydrogen is very inefficient.

[tweety]

Either will looms Big Lentil. We should burn them all.

[Braveheart]

Hindenburg model won't get a 5 star safety rating.

[chuckChuck]

8 Things You Need To Know About Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Cars
Plug-Free Electric Vehicles Are on the Way

https://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/8-things-you-need-to-know-about-hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars.html
Updated: 05/08/2015 - by John O'Dell, Contributor

Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles have been around a while, but their introduction to car shoppers has long been held back by a chicken-or-egg dilemma: A successful retail launch of fuel-cell electric cars and SUVs requires a retail fueling system. And when was the last time you saw a hydrogen station?

Well, fuel-cell vehicles — and the stations that will power them — are about to become part of the landscape, a mere 12 years after American Honda began leasing a handful of hand-built cars to the city of Los Angeles.

The cars and stations will be a limited presence at first, confined to select areas of Southern California. But if some of the world's major automakers and the U.S. and various state governments have anything to say about it, the stations ultimately will spread throughout the nation's urban areas.

The first fuel-cell vehicles entered the retail market this spring in California's Orange and Los Angeles counties, courtesy of South Korean automaker Hyundai. Japan's Toyota will introduce the Mirai fuel cell sedan in late 2015, followed in 2016 by a Honda fuel-cell car. In 2017, General Motors and Mercedes-Benz are expected to enter the market. Ford, Nissan and Volkswagen also are developing electric-drive cars fueled by hydrogen gas.

Here's what you need to know about these cars and the safety of this unfamiliar fuel. The vehicles don't need gasoline. They aren't tied to an electric plug. They produce zero emissions from the tailpipe and can deliver 300 miles or more per tank of fuel. They can be refilled as fast — or faster — than a conventional car with a 15-gallon gas tank. After extensive testing, researchers say they are as safe to drive as gasoline cars.

1. What's the Secret of Fuel Cells?
"Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle" sounds pretty exotic, but in reality it's just an electric car that replaces the bulky, heavy and expensive grid-charged battery pack with a relatively small, lightweight and expensive electrochemical system that produces electricity onboard.

The fuel cell is the system's power plant. In it, hydrogen gas drawn from an onboard pressurized tank reacts with a catalyst, typically made of platinum. The process strips the electrons from the hydrogen, freeing them to do their thing — which is to be the electricity that flows through the electric motor to power the car.

After their job is done, the electrons return to the fuel cell, where they are reunited with the parent hydrogen in the presence of oxygen pulled in from the ambient air. They meet in a ratio of two atoms of hydrogen to one of oxygen. Presto! It's H2O, or water. The water helps cool down the stack (all those excited molecules make a lot of heat) before it then dribbles out of the vehicle's tailpipe as a combination of steam and distilled water.

One fuel cell doesn't produce all that many electrons, so automakers bind scores of the flat, rectangular cells together into a fuel-cell stack to get enough juice to power a car or truck. The stack acts much like a battery, releasing electricity in a constant flow to power the vehicle's electric motor and auxiliary electronics.

Fuel-cell stacks typically are sized to produce just slightly more power than the vehicle can use under normal acceleration and cruising conditions. The excess, augmented by electricity from the vehicle's regenerative braking system, is stored in a small lithium-ion battery for use when the vehicle needs an extra burst of power.

Once the fuel-cell stack does its magic, the vehicle is just like any other electric-drive vehicle on the road, running in near silence with loads of acceleration, thanks to the electric motor's hefty torque output.

2. Where Do We Get the Hydrogen?
Hydrogen is the most common element on the planet, so there are no worries about shortages. It rarely exists as free hydrogen, however. It usually is bound to something else, like hydrogen in water or in natural gas.

We make plenty of hydrogen in the U.S, mostly by "reforming" natural gas to break down the molecules and split off their hydrogen atoms. And most of what we make is used in refining oil or manufacturing ammonia for the fertilizer industry.

Some hydrogen fuel for fuel-cell cars is pulled directly from a pipeline serving one of those oil refineries. It's near the Torrance, California, headquarters of both American Honda and Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A.

Some hydrogen is made on-site at a few fueling stations that use electrolysis to split the hydrogen molecules from water. The electricity for that process can come either from on-site solar panels or from the local electrical grid.

Most hydrogen for fuel, however, is made in large hydrogen processing plants, which are the same ones that serve the oil industry. The hydrogen is then trucked to the stations and stored in large above-ground tanks.

To make it into fuel for fuel-cell vehicles, the hydrogen must be compressed. The present standard is 10,000 pounds per square inch, which also is designated as 700 bars. It is then chilled to keep it from heating and expanding as it is pumped into the vehicle. That equipment is part of the fueling station.

A hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle's tank is sized in kilograms. A 4-kilogram hydrogen tank (8.8 pounds) holds the energy equivalent of 4 gallons of gasoline. Today's hydrogen fuel stations can fill such a tank in 3-5 minutes.

3. Is Hydrogen Fuel Safe?
The short answer is that hydrogen behaves differently from gasoline. But generally it is about as safe as the gasoline we now put in most vehicles' fuel tanks. In fact, the average gasoline tank holds three to four times the energy — and thus three to four times the explosive power — of the hydrogen tanks that the first fuel-cell electric vehicles will be using.

Hydrogen is the lightest of the elements, approximately 14 times lighter than air. So even though it is highly flammable, escaped hydrogen (burning or not) dissipates quickly and typically in a narrow column shooting straight up into the atmosphere.

Its vapors don't pool on the ground, as do gasoline's heavier-than-air vapors. So in most cases, hydrogen doesn't present as great a fire or explosive danger. To further minimize the potential for explosion, almost all hydrogen fuel stations store the gas above the ground in well-vented areas.

The University of California at Irvine has operated a public hydrogen station for a dozen years without incident, says Carl Baust, alternative energy projects specialist for the Orange County Fire Authority. Several other hydrogen stations opened in Southern California and the Sacramento area to fuel test the vehicles that have been plying the state's highways since 2002. So far, they also have been incident-free.

The vehicles themselves have arrays of hydrogen sensors that sound alarms and seal valves and fuel lines in case of a hydrogen leak. Additionally, the pressurized tanks that hold the hydrogen have been tested repeatedly and found to be safe in collisions.

One test involves firing live ammunition into the tanks to pierce them. Pierced tanks typically vent their hydrogen so quickly that even if the gas catches fire it is out of the tank before explosive pressure could build up.

In 2001, researchers at the University Of Miami's College of Engineering set fire to the hydrogen in a tank mounted in an SUV and later punctured the fuel line on a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle and set the leaking gas on fire. The burning hydrogen versus gasoline test showed that flames caused "severe" damage to the gasoline vehicle, whereas the hydrogen vehicle was undamaged because the burning hydrogen gas vented up and away from the vehicle.

4. What About the Hindenburg?
Hydrogen is scary to many Americans because of a horrific incident in 1937: A passenger-carrying German zeppelin named the Hindenburg burst into flames while landing in New Jersey during a lightning storm. The fire and resulting crash killed 36 people and dozens more were injured. Flames from the burning hydrogen that had provided lift for the zeppelin billowed into the night sky.

Or was it burning hydrogen? The gas has taken the blame for the Hindenburg disaster almost from Day One, but modern researchers have shown that the millions of cubic feet of highly flammable hydrogen pretty much burned up in less than 60 seconds.

The horrific smoke and flames caught by news cameras is now thought to have been largely from the diesel fuel that powered the aircraft's engines and the aluminum-powder-painted canvas "gas bag" that contained the hydrogen.

So yes, the Hindenburg's hydrogen was likely the villain that started the calamity, but just because it wasn't the safest thing to use to keep huge lighter-than-air ships aloft doesn't mean that it's not safe for use as a fuel in land-based vehicles.

5. Why Might I Be Interested in a Fuel-Cell Vehicle?
Automotive fuel cells are seen by many as the best bet for widespread replacement of internal combustion engines in the U.S. This is a country where cars and trucks tend to be big. Driving distances also tend to be longer than battery-electric cars can accommodate — or so many motorists think.




contd.

Click on the link to see the whole story. https://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/8-things-you-need-to-know-about-hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars.html

[chuckChuck]

For the negative chicken littles who won't read the whole article here is the section on safety.


3. Is Hydrogen Fuel Safe?
The short answer is that hydrogen behaves differently from gasoline. But generally it is about as safe as the gasoline we now put in most vehicles' fuel tanks. In fact, the average gasoline tank holds three to four times the energy — and thus three to four times the explosive power — of the hydrogen tanks that the first fuel-cell electric vehicles will be using.

Hydrogen is the lightest of the elements, approximately 14 times lighter than air. So even though it is highly flammable, escaped hydrogen (burning or not) dissipates quickly and typically in a narrow column shooting straight up into the atmosphere.

Its vapors don't pool on the ground, as do gasoline's heavier-than-air vapors. So in most cases, hydrogen doesn't present as great a fire or explosive danger. To further minimize the potential for explosion, almost all hydrogen fuel stations store the gas above the ground in well-vented areas.

The University of California at Irvine has operated a public hydrogen station for a dozen years without incident, says Carl Baust, alternative energy projects specialist for the Orange County Fire Authority. Several other hydrogen stations opened in Southern California and the Sacramento area to fuel test the vehicles that have been plying the state's highways since 2002. So far, they also have been incident-free.

The vehicles themselves have arrays of hydrogen sensors that sound alarms and seal valves and fuel lines in case of a hydrogen leak. Additionally, the pressurized tanks that hold the hydrogen have been tested repeatedly and found to be safe in collisions.

One test involves firing live ammunition into the tanks to pierce them. Pierced tanks typically vent their hydrogen so quickly that even if the gas catches fire it is out of the tank before explosive pressure could build up.

In 2001, researchers at the University Of Miami's College of Engineering set fire to the hydrogen in a tank mounted in an SUV and later punctured the fuel line on a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle and set the leaking gas on fire. The burning hydrogen versus gasoline test showed that flames caused "severe" damage to the gasoline vehicle, whereas the hydrogen vehicle was undamaged because the burning hydrogen gas vented up and away from the vehicle.

4. What About the Hindenburg?
Hydrogen is scary to many Americans because of a horrific incident in 1937: A passenger-carrying German zeppelin named the Hindenburg burst into flames while landing in New Jersey during a lightning storm. The fire and resulting crash killed 36 people and dozens more were injured. Flames from the burning hydrogen that had provided lift for the zeppelin billowed into the night sky.

Or was it burning hydrogen? The gas has taken the blame for the Hindenburg disaster almost from Day One, but modern researchers have shown that the millions of cubic feet of highly flammable hydrogen pretty much burned up in less than 60 seconds.

The horrific smoke and flames caught by news cameras is now thought to have been largely from the diesel fuel that powered the aircraft's engines and the aluminum-powder-painted canvas "gas bag" that contained the hydrogen.

So yes, the Hindenburg's hydrogen was likely the villain that started the calamity, but just because it wasn't the safest thing to use to keep huge lighter-than-air ships aloft doesn't mean that it's not safe for use as a fuel in land-based vehicles.

[blackpowder]

The biggest chicken little I know is Suzuki. His sky has been falling for decades.

We would not have had a space program without govt.
The west would not be what it is today with people like Wynne and Trudeau in charge.
No one can say what our fuel source will be in 30 years.
Just be careful which white knight you plant your resentment with.

[oneoff]

Not ready yet is one of the points.

What to do with all the current investment and new and next to new that some zealots demand be banned and decommissioned before their time is another point.

And selling hype to an ill informed public is dispicable tactic to say the least .

And the list of deliberate misleading claims and misinformation; true agendas etc. goes on and on and on and on.

[oneoff]

Notice I've never ever said a damn thing against anything that is not pie in the sky, would work in Sask and doesn't cost so much it prohibits its use. And safety and practicality; efficiency; sustainability etc also being important.



In fact those are the factors I consider for any purchase

None of above sufficient today. Obviously Not ready yet.

[binthere]

[URL="http://phys.org/news/2006-12-hydrogen-economy-doesnt.html"]http://phys.org/news/2006-12-hydrogen-economy-doesnt.html[/URL]

[oneoff]

And -50 degrees (on any temperature scale) gives new meaning to word "chilling" used above.

[oneoff]

More aptly called cryogenics.