SimpleFuel home hydrogen fuel dispenser wins $1 million DoE prize

[Peace Piper]

Green Car Reports, John Voelcker Jan 23, 2017

Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded a $1 million prize to a little-known team for what you might call a new garage appliance.

The SimpleFuel team—actually a collaboration of three separate companies—won the prize, first offered in November 2014, for its hydrogen home-fueling station.

The goal is to let drivers of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles generate hydrogen fuel at home rather than having to visit possibly scarce public hydrogen fueling sites.

Home "refueling" is not something that's possible with gasoline or diesel vehicles, but it was long touted as a possibility for cars fueled by natural gas.

Roughly half of all U.S. households now have piped natural gas for heating or hot water.

So a garage compressor that would allow that to be used for overnight refills of natural-gas vehicles was considered a major selling point.

In the case of the home hydrogen station, the device is an 8-foot tall box somewhat bigger than a pair of large refrigerators.

It uses the home's electricity supply to electrolyze water, producing hydrogen fuel that it delivers to the car's storage tanks at a pressure of up to 700 bar (10,000 psi)...snip full article: http://www.greencarreports.com/news/...lion-doe-prize

Retrofit Existing Gas Stations





Excellent discussion on the Green Car Website - at the time of this post there were 622 comments and here's the newest post by a European Hydrogen Professional named Bertrand Chauvet (user name "bdam") from http://hydrogentoday.info/:

We have debated a lot on H2 versus BEVs these past days on this forum. I continue to regret that every time H2 comes on the plate, there is a rush of battery believers who are going really mad and aggressive on the subject, more than they would be against ICE, which is frankly disturbing. It’s not specific to this blog. Everywhere, in my daily work (sustainable energy and mobility), I observe a huge aggressiveness from the battery camp, beyond normal, of the kind of behaviour you would get from someone who is frightened. Frightened to be wrong, afraid of a possibly better and more competitive solution than the one they advocate. They will justify this by saying H2 diverts good subsidies that should be entirely focused on the sole, perfect and ubiquitous solution, the battery, as if we already knew for sure where it is wise to invest, absolutely and uniquely . That’s unwise behavior.

I tried to explain my views here these days in comments, with some solid background as it is my speciality, my daily job for which I am recognised accross Europe. I feel the need to summarize it here, make my point as clear as possible, and stop spending time arguing against sometimes objective arguments, most of the time bad faith and disrespect.

1 – I am convinced that BEVs have a good case, and contribute to decarbonize the transports, although putting a potentially huge pressure on the grid that could diminish seriously the global benefit of BEV.

2 – BEVs will never be a ubiquitous solution for all kinds of transports, all usage cycles, and platforms. NEVER. Those who believe this should better think the iPhone can make coffee one day, better than a good coffee machine. The problem is that too many people here believe this, and don’t have access to the real technology, research and industrial information behind the marketing [PROFANITY DELETED BY SITE MODERATORS] and the public claims of Elon, who’s protecting his sole business and shares.

3 – The consequence of 2 is that we must not reject other electrified solutions if we are REALLY concerned about the future of the planet. Such as FCEVs and H2 in general. Who are you guys to believe you have the entire truth as of today, when thousands of experts, researchers, engineers and executive think different? You want to know what the automotive execs think today? Go there and download this survey. https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/ins...rvey-2017.html... ... 62% of the execs from 42 countries think BEV will ultimately fail, 78% believe FCEV to be the real breakthrough. Oh, yes, of course, automotive exec all lie and you know better.

4 – You cannot think the future of transportation without thinking the future of the complete energy system that goes together. What is this future energy system? According to many, for example today’s published outlook of BP, global demand for energy is expected to increase by around 30% between 2015 and 2035. Gas grows more quickly than either oil or coal over the Outlook, with demand growing an average 1.6% a year. Its share of primary energy overtakes coal to be the second-largest fuel source by 2035. Renewables are projected to be the fastest-growing fuel source, growing at an average rate of 7.6% per year, quadrupling over the Outlook, driven by increasing competitiveness of both solar and wind. The number of all electric cars (batteries and fuel cells) is assumed to increase from 1.2 million in 2015 to around 100 million in 2035 (around 5% of the global car fleet).

What is the consequence of this? More renewable means more intermittence in the grid, very different situations and RE sources depending on the territories, more LOCAL and small production and consumption, more intelligence to allow for a more fragmented and distributed electric system. And storage. Without storage, the model will not work well. All sorts of storages, short and long, small and high power. And there are, here again, not ONE unique solution for storage which can make it. There are several, battery, compressed air, water pumping, inertia wheels, and H2 that is truly considered a big one by all energy providers. Like it or not.

And more BEVs means bigger public infrastructure, more power, more energy. A recent study from the European Environment Agency says that the growth in electric vehicle use will result in extra energy demand of 150 GW production capacity in the European Union. Get that report here: http://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/tran...les-and-energy...

All this being said, I suggest that you have a look at this document, provided by the recently created Hydrogen Council, which is made of 13 industrial giants (Air Liquide, AngloAmerican, Engie, Shell, Total, The Linde Group, Alstom, Daimler, Honda, Hyundai, Kawasaki, Toyota)-(PDF) http://hydrogeneurope.eu/wp-content/...t-FINAL-HR.pdf...

This is rather complete and detailed explanation of the H2 case. If you want to seriously and objectively discuss the H2 case, read this first. If you don’t read and continue bashing H2, you just talk as a religious discussing God Elon, and we should not lose our time discussing together.

More comments at website

Hydrogen isn't just for cars- you can cook with it, heat your home with it and run your lawnmower and weed trimmer with it. The Hydrogen Energy Revolution has just begun

[Peace Piper]

Thanks for the downvotes! Talk about motivation. Here's a green solution that provides energy independence, jobs and low cost transportation, heating and fuel. And the US media isn't talking about it at all. Keep on downvoting, it's like stoking a fire. A hydrogen fire.

[CaptUSA]

Not sure why the down votes, PP... Maybe because it's a $1M government "prize"?

I'm all for innovative solutions. And I'm not exactly sure which solution (more likely, solutions) will win out. I do know that I don't want the government putting their fingers on the scale of any solution - INCLUDING OIL.

What we have going on is a race to be the preferred energy source for future transportation. It's incredibly interesting to watch. But we should allow the market to work out these solutions.

[dean.engelhardt]

It uses the home's electricity supply to electrolyze water, producing hydrogen fuel that it delivers to the car's storage tanks at a pressure of up to 700 bar (10,000 psi)...snip full article: http://www.greencarreports.com/news/...lion-doe-prize

I would love to see this become a viable replacement but I still see the some issues with hydrogen as an energy source:

Most devices that create and utilize hydrogen consume more energy than they produce. In the case where home electric is used to produce hydrogen to run a car, the same energy to produce the hydrogen if used directly to power a car would be more efficient. Please tell me that someone figured out a better device.

10,000 psi tank in a car? Is that safe?

[pcosmar]

Is that safe?

Define safe.

[CPUd]

I would love to see this become a viable replacement but I still see the some issues with hydrogen as an energy source:

Most devices that create and utilize hydrogen consume more energy than they produce. In the case where home electric is used to produce hydrogen to run a car, the same energy to produce the hydrogen if used directly to power a car would be more efficient. Please tell me that someone figured out a better device.

10,000 psi tank in a car? Is that safe?

What about PEM cells? Can they be scaled up enough to power a standard-sized vehicle?

[fedupinmo]

Home "refueling" is not something that's possible with gasoline or diesel vehicles

[Peace Piper]

I would love to see this become a viable replacement but I still see the some issues with hydrogen as an energy source:

Most devices that create and utilize hydrogen consume more energy than they produce. In the case where home electric is used to produce hydrogen to run a car, the same energy to produce the hydrogen if used directly to power a car would be more efficient. Please tell me that someone figured out a better device.

10,000 psi tank in a car? Is that safe?

If the energy to make hydrogen comes from a renewable source such as wind or solar power the efficiency is not critical. After all, every solar photon that hits the ground is wasted. If some of them can be used to produce hydrogen it's a win all around.



Is it safe? Hydrogen is safer than gasoline, and safer than propane and natural gas because escaped hydrogen rises into space.

"You won't believe how safe Toyota's hydrogen car is"
http://www.fool.com/investing/genera...en-car-is.aspx

Hydrogen Car Fire Surprise
Video documents results of hydrogen and gasoline car fires.

On a dark Florida night in 2001 an unusual and revealing experiment took place. Dr. Michael Swain with the University of Miami at Coral Gables attempted to simulate two car fires, one created by a 1/16th inch puncture in a gasoline fuel line, the other by a leaking hydrogen connector. He video taped the experiment to document what would happen if the leaks ignited. As the photos below clearly demonstrate, consumer fears about hydrogen as a transportation fuel would seem to be pretty much unfounded.

While the gasoline-fed fire eventually consumed the second test vehicle, leaving it a smoldering heap of charred steel and melted glass, the hydrogen fire was over in less than two minutes and left the hydrogen-tank equipped test car virtually undamaged. In fact, the heat inside the car never got above 67 degrees...snip more: http://evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=482

[Peace Piper]

What about PEM cells? Can they be scaled up enough to power a standard-sized vehicle?

Toyota, Honda and Hyundai fuel cell cars that are for sale now in CA are PEM. Germany will have PEM Fuel Cell trains on the tracks at the end of this year, that's to go with their PEM Fuel Cell Submarine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_212_submarine

[presence]

Home "refueling" is not something that's possible with gasoline or diesel vehicles

you'd be surprised most can be converted to either run on fryer grease or wood pellets

[sparebulb]

Oh, the humanity.