Hydrogen Refueling Infrastructure Research Articles

Hydrogen refuelling station infrastructure roll-up, an indicative assessment of the commercial viability and profitability in the Member States of Europe Union

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the roll-out of a hydrogen refuelling station (HRS) infrastructure in the Member States of Europe Union. The effort contributes to a preliminary, indicative assessment of the commercial viability and profitability of a hydrogen refuelling station network roll-out. In these concrete cases were provided scenarios at both the Member States and Europe Union levels. The business case assessment was realised for the roll-out of HRS network in a 15 years program. The results refer to key metrics to assess the overall profitability of the investment: the annual number evolution of HRSs based on the inputs provided by the user; the annual number evolution of FCEVs; annual total amount of hydrogen sold; annual capital expenditures on HES procurement (CAPEX); cash flow after interest and debt payment representing the cash flow available for equity holders; annual debt service coverage ratio (ADSCR); and net present value (NPV) at the end of the period. The first scenarios were designed to achieve results across the Member States of Europe Union. There were presented three individual detailed examples also. A second series of sensitivity analyses consider that the hydrogen mobility penetration appears more constrained, being limited to a few stakeholders in the EU with well-defined policies and programs or with more favourable conditions. Both categories of scenarios outline the idea that at the beginning of a HRS network development it is already good to have an adequate number of FCEVs for a profitable programme. The net present value (NPV) is positive and the development program is commercially viable if there is a correlation between both the HRS number and FCEV fleet dimension. This correlation leads to good or optimistic results, but for the majority NPV became positive only in the second part of the program.The roll-out's analysis of the hydrogen refuelling station network in the EU indicated that hydrogen is a part of solutions for a decarbonisation of the transport sector. There is a need to carefully develop an adequate hydrogen refuelling infrastructure if the final scope of the program is its commercial viability and profitability.

Transport industry commits to hydrogen mobility in Europe

The recent Hydrogen for Clean Transport Conference in Brussels, Belgium saw transport industry leaders confirm their commitment to expanding the deployment of fuel cell electric vehicles and hydrogen refueling infrastructure across Europe, targeting a zero-emissions transport sector by 2040.

In situ diagnostics for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

Summary Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) convert the chemical energy stored in a fuel (typically hydrogen) directly into electrical energy via an electrochemical reaction. Due to their relatively high efficiency and the fact that water is the only reaction product, they have an important role to play in decarbonisation of energy and improvement of air quality, facilitating large-scale incorporation of intermittent renewable energy technologies into the electricity grid and powering transportation. As the cost of the technology continues to fall and roll-out of the hydrogen refuelling infrastructure accelerates, lifetime and durability will be of increasing commercial importance. This review briefly summarises recent advances in the development of in situ diagnostic techniques to characterise, understand and mitigate critical degradation mechanisms in PEMFCs and provides insight on future trends and requirements.

PitPoint acquires High V.LO-City hydrogen station in Antwerp

The Dutch company PitPoint Clean Fuels has acquired its first hydrogen refueling station, after taking over the High V.LO-City station in Antwerp, Belgium. Antwerp is one of the High V.LO-City demonstration sites, funded by the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU), to facilitate the deployment of fuel cell buses and hydrogen refueling infrastructure in four European regions. PitPoint has also itself recently been acquired by the French oil & gas supermajor Total.

Eliciting preferences on the design of hydrogen refueling infrastructure

Hydrogen vehicles are already a reality, However, consumers will be reluctant to purchase hydrogen vehicles (or any other alternative fuel vehicle) if they do not perceive the existence of adequate refueling infrastructure that reduces the risk of running out of fuel regularly while commuting to acceptable levels. This fact leads to the need to study the minimum requirements in terms of fuel availability required by drivers to achieve a demand for hydrogen vehicles beyond potential early-adopters.This paper studies consumer preferences in relation to the design of urban hydrogen refueling infrastructure. To this end, the paper analyzes the results of a survey carried out in Andalusia, a region in southern Spain, on drivers' current refueling tendencies, their willingness to use hydrogen vehicles and their minimum requirements (maximum distance to be traveled to refuel and number of stations in the city) when establishing a network of hydrogen refueling stations in a city. The results show that consumers consider the existence in cities of an infrastructure with a number of refueling stations ranging from approximately 10 to 20% of the total number of conventional service stations as a requisite to trigger the switch to the use of hydrogen vehicles. In addition, these stations should be distributed in response to the drivers’ preferences to refuel close to home.

Use of certain alternative fuels in road transport in Poland

The development of biomethane and hydrogen technology in the road transport in the EU countries is recommended, among the others, in the Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council 2014/94/EU of 22 October 2014. Under the provisions of the said Directive, it is recommended to EU countries to use biomethane and progressively ensure accessibility to hydrogen cars on their territories, and above all to ensure the possibility of driving hydrogen vehicles between the member States.The territorial accessibility for biomethane vehicles is determined by the availability of biomethane refuelling infrastructure in the first place in cities and then on the road network distances recommended in this directive. The territorial accessibility for hydrogen vehicles is determined by the availability of hydrogen refuelling infrastructure, in the first place along the TEN-T network. The article presents the possibilities of using these alternative fuels in Poland, presenting some of the results of research and analysis in this area.

Editorial

Daimler has finally unveiled its next-generation fuel cell electric vehicle, after several years in which its Asian rivals have grabbed the FCEV headlines. And in a unique approach to mitigate the limiting impact of the nascent hydrogen refueling infrastructure, the Mercedes-Benz GLC F-CELL will feature plug-in technology to extend the vehicle's range.

H2ME 2 launched in Europe to grow hydrogen fueling infrastructure network and vehicle fleet

The European Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU) has signed a new grant agreement, to provide €35 million (US$39 million) in funding towards the new €106 million ($118 million) Hydrogen Mobility Europe 2 (H2ME 2) project. This marks the launch of a second pan-European deployment of hydrogen refueling infrastructure, alongside passenger and commercial fuel cell electric vehicles.

Early Hydrogen Station Economics Analysis

Deployment of the hydrogen supply infrastructure is one of most critical issues that must be addressed for a successful market transition to fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV). Not only must hydrogen refuelling infrastructure be constructed, it must also be commercially viable and sell hydrogen to customers at retail prices that will encourage the continued expansion of the vehicle market. The objective of this study is to develop a station deployment optimization model and analyze station network economics and risk of investment. The model optimizes key deployment decisions to meet fuel demand by trading off infrastructure cost and fuel accessibility cost. Decision variables are when, where to build and the size of stations. Fuel accessibility cost is relative to gasoline, measured by additional detour time in order to access hydrogen refuelling stations. A case study is conducted for the City of Santa Monica in California. Deployment schemes generated from the optimization model are relatively robust to assumed level of fuel inconvenience cost, suggesting that the importance of station scale economy outweighs fuel convenience, subject to the caveats of model limitations. The model does not capture the dynamic interaction between vehicle demand and refuelling convenience. If vehicle demand was modelled endogenously, the importance of refuelling convenience would be valued higher by the model. Another factor might be that the area of study is small, which limits potential detour time savings that could be achieved from adding more stations. Cash flow analysis results suggest that the station network at the study area (the city of Santa Monica) may endure negative cash flows for about a decade. Driving patterns of early FCEV adopters matter to the economics of city station network. If FCEV users on average have long annual driving distance and trips are concentrated within the region, the profitability of local station networks would be improved.

News: Transport

TOYOTA HAS announced at the CES consumer electronics trade show in Las Vegas that it will allow widespread use of over 5,000 of its patents relating to hydrogen-fuel-cell technology until at least 2020. ydrogen and hydrogen-fuelcell technology will be a social, environmental and economic game-changer, Bob Carter, senior vice-president of automotive operations with Toyota US, told delegates. Hydrogen-electric will be the primary fuel for the next hundred years. Carter pledged Toshiba would do everything possible to kick-start the development of hydrogen re-fuelling infrastructure.

Impact of Hydrogen in the Road Transport Sector for Portugal 2010-2050

This paper presents an analysis of the potential economic-wide energy and CO2 emissions implications of hydrogen vehicle penetration into the Portuguese road transport over the time-horizon 2010-2050. The energy and emissions implications are obtained using PATTS (Projections for Alternative Transportation Technologies Simulation), an excel spreadsheet model based on forecast scenarios. Historical data and trends of gasoline versus diesel share, fleet scrappadge, representative light-duty vehicle technologies life cycle energy and emission factors, are used to estimate, on a yearly basis, the total fleet life cycle energy consumption, CO2 emissions and air quality related impact. The macroeconomic effects are assessed with a Computable General Equilibrium model that is solved as a non-linear optimization problem formulated in GAMS software capable of dealing with substitution between labour, capital stock, electric energy and non-electric energy factors of production. It integrates parameter inputs obtained from PATTS tool where the transportation sector becomes hydrogen driven and a wide hydrogen refuelling infrastructure is deployed. The simulation experiments show that “hydrogen technologies” are likely to become economically viable. Household consumption, real GDP and investment increase from baseline. The positive impact upon the economic variables is supplemented by energy costs reductions, of just -0.1 to -0.3 percent per annum, in both high-price and low-price cases. The economy grows faster in the low-price case where the reductions in energy costs are also more pronounced. CO2 avoided emissions due to hydrogen economy reach a maximum of 2 kton/km in 2050, if the natural gas steam reforming production method is adopted.

48 hours to build a hydrogen refuelling station, 3 minutes to fuel: 10+ years to profit…

Welcome to the chicken-egg challenge anno 2013 for fuel cells and hydrogen. Technology is working and continuously fast advancing – the next challenge is market introduction and volume build-up to reduce cost and reach break-even. H2 Logic is striving to provide our part by developing reliable and cost-effective hydrogen refuelling infrastructure.

Characteristics of New Approach for Aluminum Hydrogen Storage Materials

Hydrogen energy research is not only solving environmental issue such as a fossil fuel resources and alternative energy reduction measures, but also tailored for the issues important to the future of the automotive industry are one of the green innovations. In order to achieve a hydrogen energy systems, and infrastructure development, technology development are important elements relating to the use of hydrogen production, transport and storage [1]-[5]. Because hydrogen is a substance that has the advantage of being compared to the bulk storage of electrical energy. In order to disseminate the fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen fuel is in fuel cell vehicles, alternative fuel vehicles fuel tank will need a board hydrogen storage system. [6]-[10] There needs to be improved as a hydrogen refueling infrastructure also temporarily storing hydrogen, the hydrogen with the ability to provide a stable and secure

Intention to act towards a local hydrogen refueling facility: Moral considerations versus self-interest

Using hydrogen as a fuel in transport may reduce environmental and societal problems resulting from current fossil fuel use, such as climate change and oil dependency. However, this requires both building hydrogen refueling infrastructure and gaining the acceptance of the citizens living nearby. Knowing what motivates citizens to act in favor of or against hydrogen refueling facilities may help in the development of policies that encourage the use of hydrogen as a fuel. This paper aims to contribute to this by examining whether intention to act in favor of, or against, a local hydrogen refueling facility is more strongly based on moral considerations or on self-interest. To this end, the explanatory value of the Norm Activation Model (NAM) was compared with the explanatory value of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). The analyses were carried out on data collected from a group of Dutch participants who received information about hydrogen as a fuel, hydrogen technology, and the opinion of stakeholders. The group consisted of 800 participants, of which 495 were in favor and 92 against a local hydrogen refueling facility. We found that both NAM and TPB variables significantly explained intention to act for supporters and opponents. The NAM variables explained intention to act more strongly than the TPB variables for both groups. These findings suggest that intention to act both in favor of and against hydrogen refueling facilities was more strongly based on moral considerations than on self-interest. If TPB variables were added to a model that included NAM variables, the explained variance increased for the supporters group, whereas this was not the case for the opponents group. These results indicate that for supporters of hydrogen refueling facilities, self-interest is a secondary goal after moral considerations but that this is not the case for opponents. To validate the findings, the analyses were also carried out on data from a group of participants that did not receive information. This control group consisted of 414 participants, of which 184 were in favor of and 45 against a local hydrogen facility. The same results were found for these supporters and opponents, indicating the robustness of our findings.

Energy and environmental impacts of alternative pathways for the Portuguese road transportation sector

This study presents a methodology to develop scenarios of evolution from 2010 to 2050, for energy consumption and emissions (CO2, HC, CO, NOx, PM) of the road transportation sector (light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles). The methodology is applied to Portugal and results are analyzed in a life-cycle perspective. A BAU trend and 5 additional scenarios are explored: Policy-based (Portuguese political targets considered); Liquid fuels-based (dependency on liquid fuels and no deployment of alternative refueling infrastructure); Diversified (introduction of a wide diversity of alternative vehicle technology/energy sources); Electricity vision (deployment of a wide spread electricity recharging infrastructure); Hydrogen pathway (a broad hydrogen refueling infrastructure is deployed). Total life-cycle energy consumption could decrease between 2 and 66% in 2050 relatively to 2010, while CO2 emissions will decrease between 7 and 73% in 2050 relatively to 2010. In 2050 the BAU scenario remains 30% above the 1990 level for energy consumption and CO2 emissions; the other considered scenarios lead to 4 to 29% reductions for energy consumption and 10 to 33% for CO2 emissions in 2050 compared to the BAU. Therefore, alternative vehicle technologies are required in the long-term, but changes in taxation and alternative transportation modes policies are crucial for achieving short-term impacts.

Hydrogen Refueling Infrastructure Design for Personal Mobility Devices using Frugal Engineering Approach

More than 150 Hydrogen refueling stations were built around the world in the past 10 years. Much of the technical issues with passenger fuel cell car were discussed and studied. However, fuel cell passenger cars are still far from mass production stage. The problem mainly lies with the high cost of fuel cell car production and insufficient hydrogen refueling infrastructure. While the future of fuel cell passenger cars are not clear, fuel cell for personal mobility devices like bicycles get more and more attractive. This is mainly due to the simplicity in system design and reducing cost of small size hydrogen fuel cells. But for this technology to be commercialized, affordable hydrogen refueling stations is crucial. This study discusses solutions for small sized hydrogen refueling stations based on pressure equalization and simulates the Hydrogen utilization ratio based on different equipment setup. The study is also supported with the experimental data from prototype fuel cell vehicles developed by eMobility in Singapore.

Sustainable Hydrogen Evaluation in Logistics; SHEL

Materials handling vehicles are currently powered by either electric motor based on lead-acid batteries or combustion engines employing diesel or liquefied petroleum gas. Fuel cells offer significant advantage over the competing technology.SHEL is a three-year European project involving 13 partners from six countries. The overall aim of the project is to deploy 10 fuel-cell powered forklift trucks and associated hydrogen refuelling infrastructure across 3 sites in Europe. Real time information will be gathered, and efficient procedures will be developed to reduce the time required for product certification and infrastructural build approval.

Analysis of a “cluster” strategy for introducing hydrogen vehicles in Southern California

The cost and logistics of building early hydrogen refueling infrastructure are key barriers to the commercialization of fuel cell vehicles. In this paper, we explore a “cluster strategy” for introducing hydrogen vehicles and refueling infrastructure in Southern California over the next decade, to satisfy California's Zero Emission Vehicle regulation. Clustering refers to coordinated introduction of hydrogen vehicles and refueling infrastructure in a few focused geographic areas such as smaller cities (e.g. Santa Monica, Irvine) within a larger region (e.g. Los Angeles Basin). We analyze several transition scenarios for introducing hundreds to tens of thousands of vehicles and 8–42 stations, considering: • Station placement • Convenience of the refueling network • Type of hydrogen supply • Economics (capital and operating costs of stations, hydrogen cost). A cluster strategy provides good convenience and reliability with a small number of strategically placed stations, reducing infrastructure costs. A cash flow analysis estimates infrastructure investments of $120–170 million might be needed to build a network of 42 stations serving the first 25,000 vehicles. As more vehicles are introduced, the network expands, larger stations are built and the cost of hydrogen becomes competitive on a cents per mile basis with gasoline.

FCVs will be a key element in European vehicle powertrains portfolio to achieve 2050 goals

This article summarizes the conclusions of a recent study carried out by management consultancy McKinsey on behalf of a European industry-government consortium. We extract the key findings in the report, A portfolio of power-trains for Europe: a fact-based analysis, in particular as they relate to fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) and the associated hydrogen refueling infrastructure. The study takes into account the estimated costs of scaling up a sufficient hydrogen infrastructure, and finds that they are not a barrier for market acceptance of FCVs.

Macro-level optimized deployment of an electrolyser-based hydrogen refuelling infrastructure with demand growth

Hydrogen-powered vehicles are receiving a significant amount of attention due to their potential for reduced greenhouse gas emissions, increased production pathways, and the higher efficiencies of fuel cells as compared to internal combustion engines. A major obstacle to the commercialization of hydrogen vehicles is the lack of a developed hydrogen refuelling infrastructure. A cost-effective infrastructure requires a significant number of hydrogen-powered vehicles in use. A plausible solution to the ‘chicken and egg’ dilemma requires the development of an infrastructure prior to competitive economic viability. This article employs optimization techniques to design a public-policy-supported infrastructure at minimum cost as the number of hydrogen vehicles increases from 10 to 100,000. The specific case used is the development of an infrastructure across a major Canadian highway spanning South Ontario and Western Quebec.