Brian, rather than send you a thick document I have decided to send you the below.
Please call me if you have any questions.
best regards,
Charles Boardman
========================= Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Letter May 1995 Vol. x/No.5
Stanford U., General Electric Propose Massive Demo of Hydrogen-Fueled Cars
in LA Basin
STANFORD, CA - If Paul Kruger gets his way, the first of some 100,000 hydrogen-powered vehicles - give or take a few ten thousand - could start operating in the smog-soaked Los Angeles air basin around the turn of the century in a massive demonstration of hydrogen s power to clean up the atmosphere.
Kruger, a professor at Stanford University s Civil Engineering Department, has drafted a proposal that would team his university with the Nuclear Energy Division of General Electric Company to do just that.
Stripped to its essentials, the idea would be to use surplus baseload power from whatever nearby primary sources are available - nuclear, emerging solar and wind, geothermal - to power a 100 MW electrolyzer to produce the fuel for hydrogen-powered vehicles, primarily light duty van fleets.
Kruger who has spent more than 30 years teaching nuclear civil engineering at Stanford is currently working with graduate student Marc Floravanti to assess Mexico s geothermal potential for making hydrogen. This project is part of the U.S. Energy Department s Geothermal Agreement with Mexico s Federal Energy Commission (CFE) to use its geothermal resources for making electricity to, among other things, help clean up Mexico City s huge pollution problem.
Mexico May Provide 100 MW of Geothermal Electricity
The kicker: Kruger believes there is a good change Mexico s CFE would join such a program by providing the 100 MW needed to run the electrolyzer from the Carro Prieto geothermal plant near Mexicali, less than 200 miles from Los Angeles. It could be their contribution to such a consortium as an exercise of what role hydrogen can play in cleaning up a populated air basin, Kruger says. CFE is already selling electricity to San Diego, and the 100 MW could be readily wheeled up to Los Angeles.
Kruger has been canvassing potential members of such a consortium since last October when he together with two G.E. executives, Andy Hunsbedt and Charles Boardman, presented the proposal to DOE s Hydrogen Program Office. He says DOE likes the idea and encouraged him to go ahead, but can t provide any funding until later this year.
He says South Coast has sent a supporting letter. Kruger has contacted Electrolyzer Corp. of Canada which has expressed interest, and two utilities. General Electric s initial contribution would be its utility planning software and expertise in managing excess power generation capacity. The intent is to discuss with large power producers availability and cost of off-peak power, at lowest available rates - hopefully 4-6 cents/kWh - to make hydrogen competitive.
Whether Kruger can turn his concept into reality is uncertain. DOE Hydrogen Program Manager Neil Rossmeisi says he will support the initial one-year Phase Zero feasibility assessment, but beyond that, it s iffy.
A source in California familiar with renewable energy issues and Zero Emission Vehicle requirements believes the chances of getting a hydrogen infrastructure in the Basin are remote. It would represent a tremendous challenge, one which is yet to be met by any of the other alternate fuels, not even a natural gas infrastructure.
Four Phases, $100 Million Overall
At present, Kruger is looking for about $500,000 for the initial one-year feasibility study (He currently is receiving more than $100,000 from DOE s Geothermal Division for the Mexican studies which would become part of the $500,000 if the Hydrogen Program Office funds the initial phase). He envisions four phases - feasibility, design and permitting, construction, and operations.
Technically, building 100 MW worth of electrolytic water splitting performance seems to be doable. Kruger envisions four 25 MW units - one for each county of the South Coast air basin to cut refueling distances. They would be built in Phase 3, followed by two years of demonstration of hydrogen production, production, storage, transportation and utilization.
While nobody has built an electrolyzer of that size - the biggest so far seems to be one with about 15 MW of input power - it appears feasible to group smaller units of 1.25 to 1.5 MW, even 2MW, into 25 MW pods, according to Jay Laskin, marketing manager for Teledyne Brown Engineering-Energy Systems, of Hunt Valley, MD, the last American major manufacturer of electrolysis equipment.
One, is there any guarantee that the Mexican contribution of 100 MW of power will really materialize? He, at least, thinks it s not certain.
Secondly, will there actually be enough vehicles on the road that would be able to use all that hydrogen? And thirdly, as the biggest issue, are you really going to get $50 million worth of coast sharing (commitment) from industry?
The 100 MW capacity figure is based on purely pragmatic considerations-the potential Mexican contribution. We have reviewed what s worth doing, Kruger says. Five MW is not going to convince anybody. 50 MW is fine. We have looked at 200 MW, but the potential of 100 MW from CFE makes that a good starting point in the feasibility study. That would provide fuel for a lot of cars.
Indeed: Kruger would like to convert 1-2% of the roughly nine million vehicles operating in the Los Angeles basin-up to 180,000 vehicles-to hydrogen, both internal combustion engines and fuel cells. We are going to compare electric vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, gasoline vehicles, he says. We are going to try to get a uniform delivery van fleet-the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, utility repair vans, etc. where the vehicles are somewhat similar, operating under similar conditions to get good engineering numbers needed to scale up to basin-wide fleet of all different types of vehicles.
Mexico City, Tokyo, May Join Effort Kruger believes a massive comparison of competing road transportation technologies is essential to come to gripe with the populated urban areas around the globe, such as Mexico City, but also Tokyo:
He says he found considerable interest in the epidemiological health value of hydrogen fuel, and the WE-Net program is considering joining the study for comparing Tokyo with Mexico City and Los Angeles as a three-city comparison of hydrogen cost reduction from credits for improved air quality.
Electric vehicles have a leg up at present because of legislative support, he notes. We are saying hydrogen deserves investigation as an alternate long-term solution to air pollution abatement in heavily trafficked areas. It deserves equal treatment to the electric vehicle.
Some Evaluation Rules for Everyone
But whatever they do will have to come under the same measurement rules, he says. That s the one criterium Stanford will insist on. Kruger argues a huge test such as the one that Stanford and GE are proposing is essential to make any quantifiable impact. there is no point in making enough hydrogen to run 100 vehicles, he says. You will not be able to statistically prove anything with that for reducing air pollution.
A major part of the demonstration project would be presumably reduce pollution but by how much is unclear at present, in part be cause of statistical uncertainties. But based on back-of-the-envelope calculations, Kruger and Fioranvanti believe auto exhaust might be reduced 20-30% which in turn might mean a significant reduction in health care costs, as well as credits for avoided regulatory costs, such as catalytic converters: A 10% reduction in the $9 billion in health care costs - that s what I m shooting for, he says.
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Advanced Electrolyzer to Do Double Duty as Load Leveler, Hydrogen Supplier
for Busses
PUTZBRUNN, GERMANY - The need: cheap electricity to economically make
hydrogen for clean urban road transport.
The lure: economically load-manage the fluctuations in a typical European power grid system via an advanced electrolyzer, capable of automatically adjusting hydrogen output over a wide range of electric loads.
The payoff: the utility sells electricity cheaply because it saves money by avoiding operations of a stand-by load-leveling plant or, in remote grids, banks of batteries.
These are the basic reasons for the development of a advanced pressurized alkaline bipolar filter-press type electrolyzer type here that is expected to go into service late next year or early 1997 to provide the fuel for an experimental hydrogen-powered bus line in the town of Karlaruhe in southern Germany (H&FCL, Feb. 1995).
And, its developers say, the design has been tested and already certified by Germany s TUV (Technical Safety Control Board) for operation in public places such as gas stations.
Three Year Tests with 100 kW Prototype A 100 kW prototype of the pressurized alkaline bipolar filter-press type electrolyzer designed by GHW (Gasellschaft fur Hochieistungselektrolyseure, or Society for High-Performance Electrolyzers) here, has been running test operations since 1992.
GHW is a joint venture of three companies, Daimler-Benz aerospace, the project leader in the Munich airport vehicle project (H&FCL, April 1995); Linde AG, and industrial gas producer in nearby Hoellrlegelskreuth near Munich, and Hamburgische Electricitatewerke AG, a utility in the northern port city of Hamburg.
In the planning stage now is a 1 MW electrolyzer that is to be deployed for the Karisruhe bus project-provided public and corporate funding is forthcoming, which is expected but not certain.
In a transatlantic telephone interview with H&FCL, GHW executive Rolf A. Brand explained that in European utility practice, baseload power plants are operated at only 97.5% capacity to leave room for output fluctuations. The standard European grid frequency of 50 Hz must be held within very narrow tolerances, meaning that output and demand must be closely matched: a major mismatch leads to frequency changes with undesirable effects (electric clocks don t run on time, tape recorder motors run at the wrong speed).
If power demand exceeds the 2.5% margin, additional stand-by capacity, or spinning reserve, must be added in the form of additional quick-start generating capacity or even large battery storage systems for small independent grids-storage sheds the size of football fields, according to a GHW paper. I call the spinning reserve an electric waste energy because primary energy is required just to keep it ready for immediate use in case of an emergency, Brand said in a paper last year. The primary control is wasting energy because of inefficient power generation in following the fluctuations of the grid.
Follows Load Variations Quickly, Automatically Brand says unlike many conventional Electrolyzers which also have to operate at a fairly constant rate, the GHW electrolyzer- an asbestos-free design with a zero-gap configuration of electrodes and diaphragm-quickly and automatically adjusts to changes in power supply over a wide range, from 15 to 120% of its rated capacity, while maintaining good quality of the output gases hydrogen and oxygen:
Tests showed that hydrogen purity at 100% rated load was 99.5%, dropping slightly to 99.2% at 20% load. Operating at temperatures of up to 150?C, efficiency is 80% at rated load, rising to 87% at 20%. This means that the base load plants can be safely operated at 100% capacity without creating any mismatch and frequency fluctuations-the electrolyzer will soak up the available excess capacity and will churn out more hydrogen and oxygen.
Because of its rapid response and flexibility, the GHW electrolyzer is regarded as ideal for systems where regenerative sources such has wind and solar feed fluctuating power into the grid, creating additional instabilities in the grid, Brand says.
In addition to producing fuel for busses and other road vehicles, the stored hydrogen could also be converted back to electricity via fuel cells or hydrogen-fired turbines to meet peak demand.
Brand says the electrolyzer s quick load-following ability is in large measure due to its pressurization at 30 bar. With conventional electrolyzers, hydrogen tends to diffuse through the diaphragm to the oxygen side when they operate at less than rated loads (typically below 80%), reaching a danger level at 2% of hydrogen in oxygen. At that pint most conventional electrolyzers have to be shutdown for safety reasons. With pressurization - the cell operates under constant pressure inside a pressure vessel - that migration problem is apparently eliminated.
Sufficient Pressure for Hydride Refueling Other advantages claimed for pressurization are that 30 bar is sufficient for filling hydride storage units directly; no additional compression is needed for pipelining; and for high compression of 200-300 bar, the very expensive first compression stage can be eliminated.
As to costs, Brand says the goal is to offer the electrolyzer installed at about DM 1,200-1, 800/kW ($882-1,323 at current exchange rates), but we aren t quite there yet. Conventional, non-pressurized electrolyzers, which aren t really comparable, are available at $600-800, he says. Until recently Germany s Lurgi had offered a pressurized electrolyzer with a more conventional design and lower efficiency at about DM 1,200/kW ($882), he added. Lurgi has left the field in the wake of large losses of its parent, Metallgesellschaft.
In exchange for load leveling service, Brand expects rock bottom electricity prices from German utilities. He says early analyses indicate that prices as low as DM 0.03-0.05/kWh (2-3 cents) are possible, bout one fourth of current average domestic rates of DM 0.20-0.25/kWh (14.7-18.3 cents), going as high as DM 0.60-0.70/kWh (14.7-18.3 cents), going as high as DM 0.60-0.70/kWh (44-51 cents).
Brand estimates the total Karlaruhe project, including busses and electrolyzer, will cost on the order of DM 25 million ($18.4 million). First procurement offers have been made, but the management of the main corporate participants, the Badenwerk utility in Karlsruhe and Daimler-Benz, still haven t signed off.
Much depends on financial support from the German government and the European Union. Brand says the signals from Bonn s Education and Science Ministry as well as from Brussels are encouraging, but no final decision is at the hand.
It won t happen if there is no public support, says Brand. If there is no money, it would be a clear signal that there is no public interest.
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