THE compendium of vehicles powered by hydrogen now stretches from excavators to micro-taxis, trucks, boats, vans, single-deck and now double-decker buses – and even small planes.
It works by reacting hydrogen with oxygen in a fuel cell to generate electricity. The only direct emission is water.
Talking about a revolution
So at last, the long-awaited hydrogen revolution is here. Or is it?
Back in the early 2000s, backers of hydrogen thought it would dominate the clean automobile market.
But the promised “hydrogen highway” never materialised, for a couple of crucial reasons.
Firstly, hydrogen power needed a new infrastructure, whereas rival battery cars could be charged off the near-ubiquitous electricity grid.
Secondly, high-powered batteries at that time were already well-advanced for other uses such as computers, but hydrogen was not.
So hydrogen lost the head-on battle for the motor car. But now it’s back in the frame for the sort of transport, industry and heating tasks that batteries are struggling to fulfil.
Trucks fall into the same category as construction machines such as excavators and bulldozers – where batteries range and weight would make it a non-starter.
Double deckers
The Bamford family, which manufactures double decker busses in its Wrightbus factory at Ballymena in Northern Ireland, and also owns JCB construction equipment (where it is trialling a prototype hydrogen fuel cell excavator), says it has orders for 80 hydrogen powered double-deck buses.
That still leaves the issue of charging infrastructure – but that can be solved by providing hydrogen pumps on motorways for long-distance truckers.
The same network could fuel hybrid battery and hydrogen cars of the future and dispense with the need for ever-heavier batteries in plug-in cars.
Buses could use hydrogen stored at depots in Kevlar-lined tanks for safety and fears of hydrogen tanks exploding have been addressed by the advent of tanks lined with Kevlar and hydrogen release mechanisms in case the tank is struck.
Taking off
Airports could also store hydrogen, and the first test flight of an electric plane in the UK recently was powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.
There is – forgive the pun – a head of steam building over hydrogen. Germany is racing ahead with a network of filling stations and a hydrogen train. It’s investing €7bn in a bid to dominate the hydrogen market.
The EU Commission wants a slice of the action.
The website Euractiv reported that it plans to publish a hydrogen strategy soon. A leaked draft floated the idea of making the Euro the currency for international hydrogen trades, as the US Dollar is for oil.
The UK government also intends to announce a hydrogen strategy before the Parliament closes for the summer, as part of its economic recovery package.
It’s being spurred on by rebukes that the UK lost the battle for battery technology to China – so it mustn’t let the hydrogen bandwagon escape. The government is advised by its Committee on Climate Change to start large-scale trials in the early 2020s.
Indeed, within weeks from now, Britain’s first hydrogen train – developed by Birmingham University – will be tested on regular tracks.
So it looks as though hydrogen has finally made it. But not so fast… because it’s by no means trouble-free.
Currently almost all the hydrogen sold in the UK is produced by splitting it from natural gas (Blue Hydrogen). But that’s costly and emits lots of planet-heating carbon dioxide.
The problem can be tackled by capturing the CO2 at a hydrogen production hub, then burying it with carbon capture and storage. But that will drive the cost up further.
The alternative is inherently clean (Green Hydrogen) – but very expensive. It entails using surplus renewable electricity, like when the wind blows at night, to split hydrogen from water using a fuel cell.
Fool cells?
The process could be considered wasteful because it involves turning electricity into a gas, then back into electricity – a two-step shuffle dismissed by Tesla’s Elon Musk as “staggeringly dumb”. “Fool cells”, he calls them.
But hydrogen-lovers believe the future electricity grid will produce so much cheap off-peak power that we’ll need to find other uses for it. And they hope to see the cost of fuel cells plummet following the example of offshore wind.
It’s widely accepted that homes with low-carbon heating systems such as heat exchangers will need a boost in a cold snap from another source – and that’s looking increasingly like hydrogen.
Trials are already underway using hydrogen blended into natural gas at Keele University.
And, depending on how much support it gets from the government – it looks as though a technology that lost its key battle against battery cars two decades ago will still find a place in the zero-carbon economy of tomorrow.
See page ?? The hydrogen economy – a fanciful diversion? for an exclusive article on the IDC and Sasol’s outlook on the future of hydrogen in the South African context.
