Hydrogen - Will it become the Future Fuel: Byron McCormick, a pioneer in the hydrogen fuel cell field at General Motors, is credited with coining the term "energy security" in 1999. He said at the time, "There may even be war and peace difficulties." How accurate he was, and if there was ever a moment to concentrate people's thoughts on the critical need of sustainable energy, it is now.
In addition to fuel cells, there is a movement toward building hydrogen combustion engines, albeit it is a gradual but rising trend. This is something that JCB is demonstrating with its work on hydrogen-fueled combustion engines, and Toyota is investigating the possibility of applying the same idea to automobile engines.
It has been attempted in the past, of course, with port-injection gasoline engines; however, due to the poor volumetric efficiency of burning hydrogen gas in an engine designed for atomized liquid fuel, the specific power was drastically reduced (in terms of horsepower per liter), and the emissions were significantly higher. This is no longer the case thanks to advancements such as direct injection, high compression ratios, and specifically designed combustion chambers. These innovations are what allow JCB and Toyota to be successful with their most recent engine and electrical hardware.
Having said that, there are a significant number of distinguished engineers and scientists working in the area of sustainable energy who believe that batteries are a more effective alternative than hydrogen for the storage of electrical energy. They point out that the process of generating electricity in a sustainable manner, then converting that electricity into hydrogen, then consuming energy to compress the hydrogen, and then yet more energy to transport it to a vehicle is a significantly less efficient alternative to simply generating electricity and storing it in a battery.
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However, it is possible to improve the energy equation in one step of that process by compressing the hydrogen as it is produced through the use of high-differential electrolysis rather than a mechanical pump. This would be an alternative method to the traditional method of mechanically pumping the hydrogen. Conventional electrolyzers generate hydrogen at pressures that are relatively low, but the "high output pressure" version, which was originally tested by Honda in 2010, has subsequently been used to fill the compressed hydrogen tanks of fuel cell automobiles at pressures of up to 300 bar. Now, it is possible to fill them at a pressure of 700 bar, which is the pressure that is required to get a range with a hydrogen fuel cell that is comparable to that of conventional automobiles.
In addition to enhancing the efficiency with which energy is used, there are also advantages to operations. 13 percent of the time spent on maintenance at present retail installations of hydrogen filling stations is spent on mechanical compressors. This is an expense that could be eliminated from the equation if an alternative solution were used.
The use of hydrogen as a fuel for homes is gaining popularity, and there are now experiments being conducted in the United Kingdom to see whether or not it would be feasible to mix natural gas with twenty percent hydrogen. At Cop 26, the government made the announcement that they are going to create and store enough green hydrogen at the Whitelee plant, which is located near Glasgow. This will allow them to power 225 buses each day that go from Glasgow to Edinburgh. The hydrogen will be produced by the Scottish Power Whitelee Windfarm, and it will be transformed to a usable form by the ITM Power electrolyser, which will be the biggest electrolyser ever created in the United Kingdom.
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The Whitelee project should demonstrate an approach to sustainable energy that has been talked about for the past two decades but has so far required a real incentive to become a viable reality. Given that one of the major strengths of hydrogen is also to store energy generated off-peak by converting it to hydrogen, this is an idea that has been discussed for the past two decades but has so far required a real incentive to become a viable reality. It's possible that it's the urgent need for energy security that we have now.
Together with a research team from Purdue University, Ford in the United States is striving to create a cooled quick charger cable. This will allow rapid charging speeds that are comparable to the amount of time it takes to fill up with diesel or gasoline. The cable coolant does not just function as a liquid cooler; rather, it "changes phase," going from a liquid to a vapour state and considerably enhancing the amount of heat evacuated. However, the project is still in its early phases, and testing of the prototype won't begin for another year or so at the earliest.
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