Waste Hydrogen Used to Power Vehicles and Car Wash

CBCnews (Canada) has an interesting story about how the Integrated Waste Hydrogen Utilization Project (IWHUP) uses hydrogen from two chemical plants to power pickup trucks, shuttle buses and a car wash.

The chemical plants produce more than 1000 kg/hr of hydrogen resulting form the production of sodium chlorate and clor-alkali by electrolysis of salt water. The waste hydrogen contains "chlorine, water vapor and other nasties," which have to be removed before it can be used.

Sacré-Davey Engineering saw that the hydrogen was being wasted by venting the hydrogen to the atmosphere and designed a C$18.3 million facility to treat, compress and deliver the hydrogen to two fueling stations— one in North Vancouver and the other in Port Coquitlam, a nearby suburb.

Fuel cells were deemed too expensive for the IWHUP project, and the existing internal-combustion technology was already available through Ford.

"Ford supplied the trucks and they asked us to use them as much as we can. They wanted to know how their technology would work in real-world circumstances."

-- Hamid Tamehi, senior engineer and project manager at Sacré-Davey Engineering

The station in North Vancouver fuels the project's nine pickup trucks, two small shuttle buses and a car wash. Basically stock ICE vehicles were modified slightly to run on compressed hydrogen gas instead of gasoline.

Other than routine maintenance, the only problems with the engines have been fuel injectors that have to be replaced more frequently than those on more conventional vehicles.

The North Vancouver Easywash facility is powered and heated by a 150 kW hydrogen fuel cell procured from Cambridge, Mass.-based Nuvera.

"The fuel cell not only powers the car wash, but also heats the water. We don't use all the power that's being produced, so we actually turn the switch and actually send power to the B.C. Hydro power grid."

-- Geoff Baker, co-founder of Easywash.

At the Port Coquitlam station four full-sized buses, operated by TransLink, the greater Vancouver transportation authority, that run on a mixture of compressed hydrogen and natural gas are utilized. The buses behave very much like those powered by natural gas alone, but with a 50-per-cent reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions and much lower greenhouse gas emissions.

"After the conversion, there was virtually no performance difference whatsoever, the power and torque remained the same."

-- Jack Lees, maintenance manager for Translink’s Port Coquitlam station

While IWHUP currently powers 15 vehicles, Tamehi estimates that the amount of hydrogen obtained from the two plants could power 20,000 vehicles and, if all the similar plants in Canada were tapped, there would be enough to run 250,000 vehicles.

Sacré-Davey raised 25 per cent of the funding for the project from a consortium of 12 corporate partners — including Ford Canada — and the rest from the federal government.

This sounds like a great use of hydrogen. However, it might not be economical it the Canadian government had not subsidized the project. It would be a worthwhile addition to the fuel available to fleets if most of the waste hydrogen generated by industry could be utilized. Only by avoiding the use of fuel cells in vehicles, at their present state of development, does this project make any sense. Some estimate of the cost of the hydrogen at the point where it is delivered would be necessary to assess the potential of future projects.

Comments

[Johan Bouwer]

I believe that regardless of the cost, the government has a duty to pay for new tranportation technologies, as well as making better (creative-such as the above article) use of current technologies.

[Jeremy Hughes]

What is the equivalent amount of diesel fuel for that much hydrogen?

[Jeremy Hughes]

Never mind
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/10/vancouver_2010.php

[George Bruce]

This is further evidence that we need lots of little solutions to the energy problem rather than waste time looking for one or two big solutions.

[technofossil]

This seems absurd to me-- double absurd if you consider most of the H2 is still being vented to the air. Using H2 for an internal combustion engine seems a poor use. Besides expensive, the tanks on the trucks need refilling quite often, so have limited range/day.

It looks like only about 2% of the H2 is being used...

The energy equivalent of 1000 kg-H2/hr is about 1130 gal-diesel/hr. The 15 modified trucks won't use this much, so I guess they must still be dumping most of the H2. (The 1130 gal/hr at 15K mi/yr at 35mpg is 23K cars).

They use electricity to make H2 and sodium chlorate, then dump the H2. Instead of shipping the H2 to a car wash, why not just install a fuel cell (or gas turbine/ICE generator) on site to recycle electricity?

The H2 dumped has an energy value of about 33MW. Assuming a fuel cell efficiency of 35%, that's about 11.6MW. (The car wash was .15MW)

A fuel cell costs around $4/w (future estimate of $1.5/w), so that's $47M ($17M future) using all the H2. Electric cost would be $.09 for a 5 year payback, or $.05 for 10 (less than half in the future). This project spent more than $1M per vehicle just for the compressor stations. A better use of public incentives would be the on-site fuel cell to use 100% of the H2.

The fuel cell has a pretty low efficiency-- though recovering a third of the waste is worth it. However, consider other possible uses. How about upgrading pyrolysis fuel oil, created from garbage or waste biomass at $.50/gal? It can be converted into diesel fuel by adding H2. This would make the waste H2 worth something close to H2 from natural gas.

[A less green use of the H2 would be to upgrade the tar sands in Alberta, now using natural gas and dumping CO2 in the air. There are probably other uses of the H2 as well.]

Too bad the press doesn't do calculations like that above. The moral isn't that this is a bad project-- the moral is that we can get a lot of free energy by capturing energy waste. Waste energy recovery (and conservation/effiency) should get as much attention as renewable sources.

[Angus]

This project is supported by the National Research Council of Canada which makes the project in itself a research and development project more than a commercial venture. What seems to be the confussion here is that this is an energy recovery project rather than an energy producing venture and as mentioned above, locating the entire plant near the Tar Sands or other oil producing area where the recovered H2 could be utilized in that process would probally make the H2 recovery system economical.

To further this idea, offshore oil fields could utilize Wave Energy Converters to produce H2 and inject it into crude oil deposits rather than trying to produce electricity directly. There doesn't seem to be much headway into producing energy from waves and selling it directly to the consumer. The possibilities are there for H2 use but not in as direct system such as an Automobile. I think more research along these lines are needed.

[Bob Wallace]

"... why not just install a fuel cell (or gas turbine/ICE generator) on site to recycle electricity"

As we move to a 'smart grid' and net metering we will see the opportunity for innovative generation systems to be marketed.

There are most likely many, many places where energy is being discarded today because it's too difficult to bring it to market. If one could readily sell surplus electricity then lots of companies would start to look at generation as another profit center.

[Hamid Tamehi]

I would like to clarify a few points in the article. The two electro-chemical plants vent a total of 1000 kg/hr. At this time the project is only capturing and purifying 25 kg/hr. This is fuelling 9 pickup trucks, 2 shuttle buses, 4 full size HCNG buses and the 150 KW fuel cell installation.

Hydrogen powered internal combustion engines used in hybrid or plug-in hybrid architectures can be a very attractive commercial solution. Dynamic blending of hydrogen with gasoline or diesel in internal combustion engines is another solution successfuly demonstrated on pickup trucks developed by the Saskatchewan Research Council. Use of hydrogen enriched natural gas in ICE engines is yet another practical solution as demonstrated by the 4 buses in the program.

As for the fuel cell installation at the car wash, the overall efficiency is over 75% since the rejected heat from the fuel cells is also used for the car wash. This subproject claims to be of most value if installed in regions with high electricity costs (financial & environemental).

Let's not forget that hydrogen and electricity are the only energy carriers that have zero or near zero emissions when used. They can compliment each other very well in providing our industrial, residential and transportation energy needs. The real challenge seems to lie in generating electricity and hydrogen with minimal emissions. This seems to be more of an economic rather than a technological challenge.

[Clee]

They are venting 1000kg/hr? They aren't using the rest of the waste hydrogen to run a fuel cell to help power the chemical plants and the equipment that purifies and compresses the hydrogen?

[Hamid Tamehi]

There are plans in the works to utilize all of the vented hydrogen. Since BC's electricity is very cheap and green (hydro)it is hard to justify converting the hydrogen into electricity. A much better use would be to use it as a transportation fuel to displace fossil fuels.

[Alan]

Run Car on Water is a new technology to allow you to run car on water by installing a conversion kit into your car. With the conversion kit, you are allow to convert water into hydrogen. So your car can run on fuel and hydrogen! Most of the users are saving 50% of the fuel cost with this new technology!

[Jo]

It is definitely possible to run your car off of water. That's right, water as fuel!

www.water4fuel.tk

[Car polisher]

Thanks, that was an interesting read. I wonder if anyone can answer a related question I have? I have linked to a car polisher in my name. I just wondered if anyone has had any experience with these or maybe could recommend me something different. Thanks - Liz

[luc]

Hydrogen is the next big thing. Can't wait to have my own hydrogen car. I'm trying to build a hydrogen generator like some found at http://hfcv.com

[Scepter Marketing Technologies]

You can run your car on water! I just recently converted my '94 chevy silverado to run on water. It cost me less than $100 for the parts I needed and it went from getting 14mpg to 33mpg. That's double the mileage for less than it cost me to fill up. There is definitely something to this water for gas technology, It works!

[Hydrogen Cars]

hydro cars, it helps in reducing the use of oils and also increase their mileage from 50% - 70% , there are sites that offers hydro kits today, you can try it if you want, there will be no loss only benefits.

[run your car on water]

i think this is such a great thing. Hydrogen is definitely the future.

[hendrafa]

make DIY hydrogen generator : http://diy-hydrogengenerator.com

[Bucket Trucks]

It is great that people are thinking about the environment and working to make the world a safer place. Not only the materials that you are using on your home are safe for the environment but dump trucks have come a long way since the earlier models. We are learning and expanding and coming up with a wide range of safer more effective vehicles for the work force. I think it is great that many auto manufacturers are turning to hybrid vehicles to protect the environment and now they are even using hybrid dump trucks.

[Salvage Cars]

I don't think the world's so called leaders would abandon oil for alternative power regardless of whether it is hydro/electro/solar or whatever.