Availability of hydrogen supplies is one of the key issues facing developers of fuel cell vehicles, with the big question being: which comes first, filling stations or the vehicles to use them?
Without refueling facilities in sufficient numbers, fuel cell vehicles will only function in limited areas, but without demand, why build filling stations at all?
Hydrogen filling stations have opened around the world, including in California, Iceland, Singapore, and Germany, but in general they have been designed to serve captive markets. One example of this is the global program of fuel cell bus trials that are underway in major cities like London, Reykjavik, Barcelona, Hamburg, Perth (Australia), and now Beijing, or delivery van fleets in the US and Germany, e4engineering.com reported.
Scheduled for an opening in April 2005, the UK’s first hydrogen filling station in Hornchurch, Essex, will serve the three prototype hydrogen powered buses operated by Transport for London as part of the two-year European Union financed Clean Urban Transport for Europe (CUTE) project. The filling station built by BP Amoco incorporates liquid hydrogen tanks provided by the industrial gases concern, BOC, and is complemented by renewable energy from solar cells and wind turbines. The facility also incorporates a natural waste water management system. Construction has been delayed by local concerns initially regarding the installation of the turbines, which led to concerns regarding the storage of hydrogen.
Delivery, or generation For the designers of filling facilities, an early decision must be whether to cater for the delivery of hydrogen as a liquid, mimicking conventional gasoline, or to produce hydrogen on-site on-demand. The filling station at the headquarters of the California Fuel Cell Partnership in Sacramento has liquid hydrogen delivered by road tanker. The facility was opened in November 2000 and demonstrates that existing logistics can be applied to hydrogen fuel. On-site, apart from a double-wall stainless steel storage tank designed to contain liquid hydrogen at Ð253¡C and a pressure of 10 bar, there is a ’vaporizer’ a compressor to increase the gas pressure to 438 bar; and storage tubes with a design pressure of over 500 bar.
In April 2004 Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order to create a partnership for a network of hydrogen filling stations across the state, and in October, he dedicated the station at Los Angeles Airport (LAX). The facility is one of 13 to be built by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) in Southern California in support of the California Fuel Cell Partnership and the Governor’s Hydrogen Highway Network initiative.
Unlike the Sacramento filling station, the LAX site is the first in the USA to demonstrate hydrogen generation, storage and dispensing in a facility that looks like a conventional gasoline filling station. Although initially only being used by hydrogen-fuelled vehicles operating within the airport, the filling station has been constructed to look like a gas station to overcome consumer concerns, and will be open to the public at a future date.
The station, a joint project between BP, Praxair, Los Angeles Airports, SCAQMD, the California Energy Commission and the US Department of Energy, uses a hydrogen-generation module supplied by Stuart Energy, based in Ontario, Canada, to produce 24 kg/day of pure hydrogen. The Stuart Energy Station (SES) is claimed to be the world’s first multipurpose scalable hydrogen infrastructure product range, transforming electricity into stored hydrogen that can be made available on demand. Hydrogen is generated using the company’s proprietary Vandenborre Inorganic Membrane Electrolysis Technology (IMET), which features a pressurized alkaline electrolyzer generating highpurity hydrogen at up to 25 bar. For fuelling purposes, higher pressures are required and the Energy Station therefore incorporates a diaphragm compressor.
To facilitate refueling, hydrogen is stored in a cascade system of storage tanks arranged in a series of ’banks’ with a control system that determines which bank is able to deliver or receive hydrogen. During refuelling, the first bank delivers hydrogen until the pressure is equalised in the bank and the receiving tank. This pressure equalisation triggers the delivery of hydrogen from the next storage bank. This ensures that some hydrogen is always kept at a higher pressure, so that more complete vehicle tank fills can be obtained at different pressures from the same volume of hydrogen storage.

Testy relations between China and Japan were further strained this week when Tokyo signalled its intention to explore gas fields in the contested seabed between the two countries.
The Japanese Trade Ministry started accepting bids from companies to drill in a region just east of what Tokyo describes as a median line separating the countries’ exclusive economic zones.
But China disputes the border and has already started test drilling, giving it a head-start in a race to secure potential energy resources.
Japan says the Chinese drilling encroaches on its territorial waters, but Beijing has ignored demands to halt drilling and share the results. The prospects for a joint drilling project appear dimmer than ever, mg.co.za said.
The regional powers are already locked in a bitter dispute over what China calls Japan’s refusal to face up to the full horror of its conduct in Asia in the 1930s and 1940s.
The Japanese Education Ministry’s approval of school history textbooks that China says play down Japan’s wartime atrocities set off violent protests in Beijing and other Chinese cities last weekend. The Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, said on Tuesday that unless Japan confronted its past it should reconsider its quest to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
The Japanese Trade Ministry said it would sift through the test-drilling applications “as quickly as possible“, but the process could take up to three months.
Beijing did not immediately respond to the announcement but a state councilor, Tang Jiaxuan, said the energy dispute was a factor behind deteriorating bilateral ties, and warned Tokyo that awarding test-drilling rights would “bring about further complications“.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said that the decision to invite the bids had “nothing to do“ with last weekend’s anti-Japanese protests, for which Tokyo has demanded an apology and compensation.

Despite its bright promise, wind energy has taken a number of years to gain importance with major energy industry concerns.

New breeze is blowing for environmentally friendly wind energy, as industrial global players--including German firms--step in to help expand the market for the renewable resource.
Despite its bright promise, wind energy has taken a number of years to gain importance with major energy industry concerns. The US conglomerate General Electric was the first to dive into the market wholeheartedly in 2002.
Then German giant Siemens followed suit in late 2004 by buying Danish wind turbine maker Bonus Energy. Now the Munich-based firm is planning to gain customers worldwide with its newly acquired technology.
Such developments have pleased Martin KŸhn, a wind energy expert at the University of Stuttgart.
“I see it as positive that another large global player has jumped into this new market,“ he said. “That makes plain that this market is interesting for companies that have clear expectations for profits and that this sector is finally ready for prime time.“
It remains a very concentrated field, with only five firms accounting for more than 80 percent of the world’s wind energy market. Besides GE, the German firm Enercon, Denmark’s Vestas, Spain’s Gamesa and now Siemens dominate the show, dw-world.de reported.
Up until recently, the name Siemens stood for any kind of energy production except for the renewable kind. The firm earns billions with traditional energy technology with large turbines for gas and nuclear power plants.
But that looks set to change now. Andreas Nauen, head of the Siemens wind energy unit, said the company plans to double its business in the sector by 2008 or 2009. That would add up to sales of 600 million euros ($775.5 million). And the company isn’t just limiting its plans to Europe. By taking over Westinghouse, Siemens hopes to tackle the US market, which is currently dominated by GE Wind Energy.
“I don’t see any major problems,“ Nauen said. “By taking over Westinghouse we have a fantastic platform for the USA, which we will use to sell wind turbines there.“
Alongside wind turbines on land, Siemens also wants to get part of the action in so-called offshore-turbines. There are already two large Danish wind parks that use Bonus Energy turbines in the Baltic Sea.
Wind expert KŸhn expects plenty of opportunities for such sea-based parks in the future.
“The firm Bonus has a great reputation internationally, a large export market share and robust technology in the offshore sector,“ he said, adding that Siemens’ financial firepower and the firm’s further expertise would only make it a stronger international competitor.

Dean Moffatt, the architect for the Midland Center, stands in front of pipes that help provide heating and cooling to the building through geoexchange.

It’s not easy to find the furnace at the new 36,000-square-foot Midland Center commercial building in west Glenwood, US.
Don’t bother looking inside the building--the furnace is outside. Beneath the parking lot, to be exact. And hundreds of feet underground.
The earth is this building’s furnace. It’s heated, and cooled, through geoexchange technology that’s being championed by Glenwood Springs architect Dean Moffatt.
The building, near the west end of Midland Avenue, is home to occupants such as the Glenwood Dance Academy, Sopris Lighting and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It’s also home to a unique, 9,580-square-foot well field. Thirty-six holes were drilled 275 feet deep beneath an area now covered in asphalt.
The wells create a closed-loop field. Plastic tubes inserted into the well holes contain fluid that runs between underground and the building. Inside, a device like a heat pump makes use of a compressor to increase the heat being drawn from the fluid, which is warmed underground by temperatures that are in the mid-50s year-round, glenwoodindependent.com reported.
In the summer, the same earth that heats the building can cool it, again through applying compressor technology.
The benefits are substantial enough that Moffatt said he thinks a whole lot more buildings should be heated and cooled through geoexchange.
“Things run silently. They run cleanly. The maintenance costs are near zero. You’re not burning fossil fuels,“ he said.
The system requires some electricity to run compressors and fans inside the building, but heating and cooling costs still are only a fraction of what conventional systems cost.
Saving fossil fuels also matters to Moffatt. He serves on the board of the Western Colorado Congress citizens environmental group, helped state Rep. Kathleen Curry with her failed effort to get legislation passed to help property owners where gas drilling is occurring in places such as Garfield County, and has spoken out against a Bureau of Land Management proposal to allow drilling on top of the Roan Plateau.
“What I try to do is practice what I preach,“ Moffatt said. “We don’t have to drill the Roan if we do things like this. That’s a direct link.“
Moffatt is far from a lone voice preaching the merits of geoexchange. He has good company in places such as Delta and Montrose counties.
There, Tom Polikalas, communications director for the Delta Montrose Electric Association, the local electric cooperative, has been helping promote the technology with the help of the Governor’s Office of Energy Management and Conservation. Polikalas has been involved with geoexchange for several years and is seeing its use increase.
Montrose County’s new health and human services building uses geoexchange, as will a new golf course clubhouse in the Montrose area.
Moffatt designed an Alpine Bank building in Montrose that also incorporates the technology. Polikalas said he believes Moffatt’s work at the bank has been instrumental in increasing awareness of geoexchange’s capabilities within the commercial sector in that area.
Two other banks in Montrose and Olathe went with geoexchange. Polikalas estimated that probably 300 geoexchange systems have been installed in Delta and Montrose counties over the last four or five years, and most have been for homes rather than commercial structures.
Moffatt also has worked on some residential geoexchange systems.
He and Polikalas would like to see more use of the systems in government buildings. Moffatt said many of the ice rinks being built across the country now use the technology to make their ice. Geoexchange could have saved the city of Glenwood Springs money over the long run if it had used it for the city’s rink and the entire Community Center, Moffatt said.

With spring bringing warmer weather and sunnier days, many Cornell students can be found sitting on the grassy parts of the Arts quad studying, listening to music or talking with friends. Most of them probably don’t realize that they’re sitting on top of a potent biofuel.
Prof. Jerry Cherney, the E.V. Baker Professor of Agriculture, has been researching grass as biomass since 1982. For the past three years, he has focused on the possibility of using grass, in pellet form, as a possible fuel.
“The current technology is very simple,“ Cherney said. “Even with no stoves specifically designed to burn grasses, several stoves we have tested can burn grasses.“
Grasses are easy to grow, and could provide supplemental income for farmers if the technology were used widely, explained Peter Woodbury Ph.D 󈧆, a research associate in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, cornellsun.com said.
“The basic idea is to grow existing mixed grasses, or even ’old field’ vegetation, which may include goldenrods and some small shrubs, for biomass,“ Woodbury said. “This biomass can be turned into pellets and burned in specially designed stoves. These stoves are designed to have efficient combustion and low emissions of air pollutants. Grasses can be grown on land that is not suitable for growing other crops such as corn or soybeans.“
Since last summer, Woodbury has been working with a group of Cornell researchers led by Prof. John Duxbury, crop and soil sciences, in the Agricultural Ecosystems Program, which is funded by the US Department of Agriculture. One of the team’s goals is to analyze biomass production options in New York State.
Cherney explained that burning grass pellets has important advantages over burning fossil fuels.
“[The technology is] essentially greenhouse gas neutral, grasses are just recycling the carbon,“ he said.
Woodbury further explained the advantages of burning grass over other alternatives.
“There is enough land in New York State to produce biomass for energy, and we can use this biomass to reduce fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions,“ he said. “From an environmental perspective, particularly for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, there is much more benefit to burning grass or even burning corn than to turning corn into ethanol. This is because the current process for producing ethanol from corn is not very efficient.“
He also pointed out that grass is a renewable resource, which can be grown in a short period of time, and that it would be relatively easy for farmers to grow grass crops to supplement their incomes.
“They already have the equipment and the expertise, [and] harvest of grass biomass does not conflict with other tasks,“ he said.
Jenifer Wightman M.S. 󈧆, a research support specialist who is coordinating research and outreach efforts in the area of biofuels, said that using grass as a biofuel would help revive local economies and reduce our reliance on foreign oil.
“In 2003, the US had a negative energy trade deficit of $139.5 billion,“ she said. “Money spent on locally-produced energy will invigorate local communities.“