Fuel Cell Nation

US DOE Electrolyzer Webinar

Its not much advanced warning, but today the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced it is putting on a webinar on Monday, May 23, 2011, from 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. (EDT) titled "Hydrogen Production by PEM Electrolysis—Spotlight on Giner and Proton." The webinar will include a discussion of the importance of electrolysis for renewable hydrogen production with zero carbon footprint (provided you use solar, wind, etc. to generate the electric power.) (The webinar was originally supposed to be at 1:00 p.m., but the DOE personnel had another meeting crop up.)

 Monjid Hamdan of Giner Electrochemical Systems (GES) will be one of the two industry-based presenters at the webinar. I've seen his slides; it should be a good presentation for all, as it involves an emphasis on the technology, and its not just a sales job for GES' commercial products.

One final note: DOE calls it Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) electrolysis, while old-school electrochemists prefer to call it Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolysis. Same difference — its all good!

DOE 2011 Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Meeting (Part 1)

I'm just back from the 2011 US DOE Hydrogen and Vehicle Technologies Program Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Meeting in Crystal City, across the river from Washington DC. It was well attended; I heard there were 1,700 people at the two hotels where it was held.

My favorite presentation was by Avālence LLC CTO Paul Dunn, presenting his project "High-Capacity, High Pressure Electrolysis System with Renewable Power Sources." He mentioned how they had a problem in the lab last year with 6,500 psig alkaline electrolysis of hydrogen and oxygen: they produced oxygen gas with only a 96% purity (or 4% H₂ in O₂.) There's a big problem with operating this way: the lower flammability limit of hydrogen in air, or oxygen, is 4%! It's a wonder that they didn't blow themselves up!

The best part is where he described their plan to reduce the hydrogen content of the oxygen by recirculating their electrolyte on both the anode and cathode sides of the electrolyzer. Guess what - he told us they used a thermosiphon to recirculate electrolyte without a pump, and it reduced their oxygen to 0.3% hydrogen! Guess what my Giner Electrochemical Systems poster presentation discussed last year? A proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer using a thermosiphon to recirculate the catholyte! Just a coincidence? Who knows! I'm just glad I helped minimize his chances of blowing up!!

Crystal City, Here I Come!

Time for the 2011 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program and Vehicle Technologies Program Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Meeting (AMR). May 9-13, 2011 I am traveling to the Crystal City Marriott and Crystal Gateway Marriott, in Arlington, Virginia to make a poster presentation. The Poster is for the first year of a Phase II Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant I wrote titled "Unitized Design for Home Refueling Appliance for Hydrogen Generation to 5,000 psi."

The Poster presentation for the last year's Phase I work at Giner Electrochemical Systems, LLC is located here: Unitized Design for Home Refueling Appliance for Hydrogen Generation to 5,000 psi.

Here is some background on the project:

"U.S. automakers have invested significant resources in the research and development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. However, to enable their widespread use, an additional major investment will be required to construct an infrastructure for hydrogen production and delivery to fueling stations. In order to facilitate this transition, the DOE has recommended that high-pressure hydrogen generation for home refueling of fuel cell vehicles be implemented as an intermediary approach.

GES has developed PEM-based electrolyzer technology for producing hydrogen at moderate to high pressure directly in the electrolyzer stack ... A low-cost process for producing high-pressure hydrogen from water by electrolysis will significantly advance the development of the hydrogen economy, providing hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles at a price competitive with that of gasoline on a per-mile basis. The ability to produce hydrogen economically, the relatively low capital cost of the electrolyzer unit, and the low maintenance cost of the unit will allow widespread distribution of hydrogen home fueling appliances deemed necessary for the introduction of fuel cell vehicles."

I just submitted a U.S. Patent application on this idea, so I can't really say anything in addition to what's in the public documents. But, enjoy!

Global Observer - Oops!

Edwards Air Force Base            (Craig Butz photo)

AeroVironment (AV) had quite an April Fool's Day event!

At 2:30 am PDT on April 1, 2010, the liquid hydrogen-fueled Global Observer unmanned air vehicle (UAV) "experienced a mishap" during extended duration flight testing. Personnel at Edwards Air Force base, where the Global Observer testing was based, report that it crashed. The crash occurred approximately 18 hours into its 9th test flight. The Global Observer was conducting "envelope expansion" flight testing, flying higher and for a longer duration than it had previously. Crash details are sparse, probably because AV has been ordered by the US government not to discuss the accident until after an investigation was completed. Crashes during developmental testing are not unusual, as Northrop Grumman suffered from the loss of a prototype RQ-4 Global Hawk during flights in 1999.

In my previous post, Hydrogen for 65,000 Feet, I discuss how the Global Observer was designed to fly for five to seven days, powered by liquid hydrogen, at altitudes up to 65,000 feet. Design criteria included 2.8 kilowatts (kW) of power for a 380-lb. payload, and a liquid hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine producing about 60 kW of electricity.

AV received a US$140 million contract in September 2007 for a Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) of the Global Observer (GO-1). Three GO-1s were planned on being built under the JCTD, jointly overseen by six U.S. government agencies. The second air vehicle is nearing completion at the AV factory. The third unit was supposed to be a backup, but it has not been discussed since the order was announced in June 2009. AV has recently stated that most of the funding for the program has been spent.

The worst part for AV is that this high-profile crash comes after another high-profile crash 8 years ago. On June 26, 2003, the NASA-funded Helios prototype UAV broke up and fell into the Pacific Ocean about 30 minutes after take-off from Kauai, in the Hawaiian islands. Helios had been quite a successful UAV, because on August 14, 2001, Helios set a world record for a winged aircraft at an altitude of 96,863 feet (29,523.8 m). Unlike Global Observer, Helios had solar cells, an electrolyzer supplied by Giner Electrochemical Systems designed to produce hydrogen and oxygen for storage, and a fuel cell fueled by the hydrogen and oxygen to produce power overnight.

According to Wikipedia,

"The (Helios) investigation report identified a two-part root cause of the accident:

1. Lack of adequate analysis methods led to an inaccurate risk assessment of the effects of configuration changes leading to an inappropriate decision to fly an aircraft configuration highly sensitive to disturbances.

2. Configuration changes to the aircraft, driven by programmatic and technological constraints, altered the aircraft from a spanloader to a highly point-loaded mass distribution on the same structure significantly reducing design robustness and margins of safety."

Hopefully AV can quickly get beyond this latest tragedy to continue their groundbreaking work. And hopefully the conclusions of the Global Observer investigation are not as painful as those of the Helios investigation. AV better hurry, though, as Boeing plans to fly its company-funded Phantom Eye hydrogen-fueled high-altitude, long endurance (HALE) UAV demonstrator at Edwards later this year, and Aurora Flight Sciences hopes to fly their Orion twin diesel engine-powered, five-day-endurance medium-altitude UAV this year under an Air Force-sponsored JCTD.

 (Boeing photo)         (S. Schaeffer-Hopkins photo)

Hamilton Sundstrand's ILPE - Oops!

U.S. Navy nuclear submarines can travel around the world under water, generating a supply of breathing oxygen as required. Virginia-Class subs generate oxygen utilizing what is called the   Integrated Low Pressure Electrolyzer (ILPE), an electrolytic system made by Hamilton Sundstrand (a unit of United Technologies Corp. (UTX)).The heart of the ILPE involves proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer technology (right), which uses electricity and distilled water as inputs to create high purity breathing oxygen (and byproduct hydrogen).  In 2009, Proton Energy Systems announced it would provide electrolyzer stacks to Hamilton Sundstrand for the ILPE.

 When the electrolyzers have been integrated into complete ILPE systems, they look like an arrangement of individual tan cabinets that have been bolted together (left). This is because the sections must be transported in pieces through the narrow passageways on a sub, until the ILPE undergoes final assembly in place.

On March 19, 2011, the USS New Hampshire (below), a Virginia-class attack boat that entered service in 2008, was on ICEX 2011 arctic maneuvers. While approaching the Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station, a floating ice station north of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, its ILPE oxygen generator failed. According to NAVSEA, the sub switched to its backup oxygen system — using sodium chlorate “candles” — and continued normal operations.

   
Navy Photograph

According to a 3/21/2011 Reuters article:

"Daniel Coulom, a spokesman for Hamilton Sundstrand, confirmed late Monday that company staff would travel to the ship to help repair the oxygen generator, but said it was too early to speculate on what caused the problem."

A 3/28/2011 article in the NavyTimes states:

"The technicians arrived at Prudhoe Bay late March 24, according to Kevin Copeland, spokesman for Submarine Force Atlantic. They flew to the ICEX base March 25 and were to be taken by helicopter to the sub March 26."

No word on if any repairs were conducted, or even if the mode of failure has been discerned.

Giner and Wikipedia

I came across this photo (left) on Wikipedia's High Pressure Electrolysis page the other day. FYI, it is the only photograph of an electrolyzer on the Wikimedia Commons Electrolysis page. It is a picture of a Giner Electrochemical Systems, LLC (GES) electrolyzer that is capable of producing 0.35 kg of hydrogen per hour at 1250 psi, with simultaneous production of ambient pressure oxygen. Wikipedia Commons obtained the photograph from a presentation titled Low Cost, High Pressure Hydrogen Generator made at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) 2008 Hydrogen Program Annual Merit Review Meeting.

In that presentation, GES presented results on one of its DOE electrolyzer R&D programs. Page 16 includes a photograph (right) of a GES electrolyzer system being benchmarked at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). As it turns out, I was the one who traveled to NREL to help them start up the electrolyzer. Also installed at the NREL lab were:

• Solar panels and wind turbines, which were connected to
• An electrical management system, including DC/DC converters, AC/DC converters and batteries,
• With two other commercial electrolyzers, in addition to the GES electrolyzer
• Hydrogen storage, including a hydrogen compressor
• A 60 kW hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine/generator set.

GES is shipping another electrolyzer system to NREL for testing in the next year.

Smart New Membrane

It has been fun here at Giner Electrochemical Systems watching some smart people conceive of and develop a fundamentally different proton exchange membrane (PEM). This new Dimensionally Stable Membrane (DSM™) offers a marked improvement in mechanical properties over conventional PEM membranes like DuPont's Nafion^® 112.

Recently released U.S. Patent 7,867,669, Solid polymer electrolyte composite membrane comprising laser micromachined porous support describes a new Giner patent covering another aspect of its structure. In this patent, a perforated sheet of a strong engineering plastic has its holes filled with (for instance) a low equivalent-weight PEM material. Subsequently, different equivalent weight PEM is added to both sides of the central sheet. This composite DSM material shows stellar mechanical stability compared to the “gold-standard” DuPont Nafion 112 (Nafion) with a creep rate, as well as X-Y in-plane swelling at least one order of magnitude lower than Nafion.

This new material can be used in hydrogen fuel cells, direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC), electrolyzers, and for any application that uses PEM, to provide improved electrochemical performance. For instance, in 2008, Giner demonstrated DSM™ membrane on a 160 cm² active area cell that met the DOE’s electrolyzer performance targets for 2012.

Congratulations Han, Tony, Corky, Tom, and everyone else working on DSM!

7,867,669

Solid polymer electrolyte composite membrane comprising laser micromachined porous support

Hydrogen Refueling - Oops!

Mid-August 2010 was not good for General Motors (GM) in Rochester, NY (or for Praxair). WIVB-TV has posted some video of an explosion seen from an airport security camera while Praxair was exchanging some compressed hydrogen storage tanks. Look for flames in the upper left corner after the camera shakes from the blast (or see County video of explosion near airport):

 

Not the worst thing in the world, but a black eye for GM (and Praxair). Nobody died, but two people were injured.

To avoid Hindenburg-style sensationalism, I'd like to see some analysis that looks at how many accidents happen with the gasoline refueling supply chain, in comparison with the current hydrogen refueling infrastructure. This is the first hydrogen event I've heard of, and many, many gasoline "events" occur in the U.S. each year. And nobody is talking about getting rid of gasoline!

Of course, if they generated hydrogen on-site at the refueling station with an electrolyzer, rather than bringing in compressed hydrogen made from fossil fuels, this might never have happened.

Another Interim Hydrogen Step

The Green Car Congress has an article from Nikkei about Japan's METI cost-sharing 50% of programs that will upgrade refinery-grade hydrogen (90% purity) to 99.99% pure fuel cell-grade hydrogen:

With Japan moving toward wide adoption of fuel cell vehicles by fiscal 2015, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry seeks to secure a steady supply of high-purity hydrogen.

Of course, this will do nothing to reduce global warming, as all refinery hydrogen is produced from petroleum-based feedstocks. You'd think they'd try to promote electrolyzers, which use renewable (or conventional) electricity to efficiently produce pure hydrogen. But, I'm sure they will get some good press about their valiant efforts to support fuel cells.

One of the Few Companies Making Money

 

In the spirit of the holidays, here's the Thames and Kosmos Fuel Cell Car & Experiment Kit.

It has an electrolyzer to make hydrogen, a fuel cell car that uses the hydrogen to run across the floor, and other experiments you can run.

I guess at least a few companies are making a profit with fuel cells.