Fuel Cell Nation

Jim McElroy and NASA's Gemini Fuel Cell

With thanks to Robert Melusky, who posted this nice photo on Fuel Cell Nation's Facebook page.

Here is a nice photograph of the late Jim McElroy posing with a Gemini fuel cell module (container only) made from spare parts after the program ended. All the flight hardware burned up in re-entry. The documents on the table are the original GE manuals that were being discarded along with the parts.

Additional details about Jim's passing are in this post: Jim McElroy, Fuel Cell Pioneer.

https://www.facebook.com/robert.melusky

Jim McElroy, Fuel Cell Pioneer

Robert Melusky just posted this on Fuel Cell Nation's Facebook page:

It is with a heavy heart that I am posting this. Jim McElroy died Thursday (1/3/2012) after suffering a massive stroke. Jim was one of the true fuel cell pioneers beginning as a young engineer at General Electric and ending active at Bloom Energy and Infinity Fuel Cell and Hydrogen. He was not all that welcoming to his supervisor's suggestion to get into the fuel cell group as he did not want to spend his career designing fuel tanks in aircraft wings! Jim was a key person on the team that placed the first PEM fuels cells for a practical application in the Gemini Space Program and over the years he amassed more than 55 patents in this industry. His fertile mind was active right up until his death, guiding a team of young engineers to implement his truly innovative ideas. He was a remarkable man.

I knew Jim from my time at Giner, where I demonstrated an anode tail-gas hydrogen recovery system (utilizing partial-pressure swing adsorption) for Bloom Energy. Jim was a great guy; I am glad I was able to hear some good GE stories from conversations with him and Giner's Tony LaConti (another old-timer from the GE Gemini program who has now passed away.) We will all miss him greatly.

Robert MeluskyRobert Melusky

MIT Sloan Clean Energy Ventures Thoughts

Some of the most interesting numbers out of my recently-completed MIT Sloan Executive Education class Clean Energy Ventures: Creating Innovative New Businesses Through Entrepreneurial Management involve Massachusetts, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT.)

Regarding Massachusetts, I learned that there are currently 5,000 clean energy companies here, which currently employ 1.5% of the state's work force! I had no idea that there was that much clean energy development going on locally!

Regarding MIT, over 26,000 startups have been spun out over the years. Annual sales from these companies total about $2 trillion, which would make it the 11th biggest economy in the world.

The May/June 2012 issue of Technology Review: Can Energy Startups Be Saved?  echoes many of the same issues faced by startup companies in the energy arena that were discussed in my Clean Energy Ventures class. The article states "...given that energy is a highly competitive commodity business dominated by entrenched corporations and infrastructure, commercializing new energy technologies requires much more than a large infusion of money. Scaling up innovations in energy production also requires exceptional acumen in business, engineering, and understanding markets."

This was a primary thrust of the class, that it is much harder to start a new energy company, compared to a software or Web-based startup. The skill set required in energy goes well beyond the business and technical arena, and includes public policy and environmental abilities. Furthermore, you must be patient in the energy arena, as you can't make a company and sell it in 18 months for a billion dollars, as the Instagram founders did with Facebook recently. Energy companies take years to develop (often at least a decade).

The best thing about learning all these skills is that since the energy arena seems to be the toughest to do business in, my new skills should translate well into any business area.

Is Carbazole the Energy Carrier of the Future?

This post was originally published in the Hydrogen Fuel Cars and Vehicles Blog.

N-ethyl carbazole

According to Wikipedia, N-ethyl carbazole (C₁₄H₁₃N) was used as a chemical weapon (irritant) in World War I. Now it (and related organic compounds) is being investigated as a hydrogen transport material for fuel cell vehicles.

In 2011 I read some news out of Germany about a “new” method of carrying hydrogen in fuel cell vehicles: Professors Wolfgang Arlt and Peter Wasserscheid (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg) published “A future energy supply based on Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHC)”, which described a scenario where an organic liquid (such as N-ethyl carbazole, or carbazole) is used to carry hydrogen in unpressurized tanks on hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles. On-board the vehicle, a reactor uses a heated catalytic reactor to strip hydrogen gas from the carbazole, providing hydrogen fuel to the fuel cell. Later on at a gas station, the spent carbazole is removed from the vehicle’s fuel tank and replaced by fresh, fully-hydrogenated carbazole. The spent carbazole is returned from the gas station to a processing plant to have hydrogen added to it, preparing fresh hydrogen-rich fuel that is ready to be transported back to gas stations. It is a complicated process, but being touted as a potential solution to the problem of efficiently carrying hydrogen on-board vehicles.

The idea has been picked up by numerous German news outlets including Spiegel-online, Financial Times Deutschland and AutoBild. In addition to the flurry of interest in the German press, several German TV channels have broadcast stories. Furthermore, Rainer Bomba, State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development (BMVBS) has been quoted as saying "This is the future in the automotive industry." Accordingly, the BMVBS has pledged 400,000 euros to the project.

Professors Arlt and Wasserscheid admit that their “new” technology is based on a 2004 patent from Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. Arlt and Wasserscheid do not supply any new data, and apparently are only beginning to explore the utility of carbazole in the hydrogen economy.

Some history now: starting April 1, 2005, Air Products began a U.S. Department of Energy-funded study on using carbazole as a hydrogen carrier for fuel cell vehicles. Air Products worked on a reactor that used heat and a catalyst to strip hydrogen from the carbazole, as well as process economics and other tasks. To address toxicity questions with carbazole, Air Products conducted various tests. 2008 toxicity test results can be summarized by:

“Toxicology testing revealed that neither N-ethylcarbazole nor perhydrogenated N-ethyl carbazole are mutagenic, as judged by the negative Ames test. However, perhydrogenated N-ethyl carbazole was found to be corrosive and acutely toxic using other standard tests. Thus, while perhydrogenated N-ethyl carbazole remains a suitable model compound for reactor research, it could present concerns for commercial use.”

However, this is not why the DOE stopped work on this project. Carbazole research was halted because it was projected to have no hope of meeting the energy storage goals of the DOE. In the July 02, 2010 DOE Hydrogen Program Record #9017, On-Board Hydrogen Storage Systems – Projected Performance and Cost Parameters, the carbazole system capacities are well below the DOE 2010 targets of 4.5 wt% and 28 g-H2/L:

“Assessments of the liquid organic n-ethyl carbazole for vehicular storage yielded capacities in the range of 2.1-2.8 wt% and 18-21 g-H2/L that are also below the 2010 system targets indicating this will not be a viable vehicular option unless materials with much greater quantities of releasable hydrogen and lower reaction temperature can be found.”

Below is a graph from DOE Hydrogen Program Record #9017, which illustrates how inadequate carbazole is, relative to the universe of alternative hydrogen storage methods. The brown oval (in the lower left corner) labeled LCH2 (Liquid organic Carrier H2) uses data from a 2009 TIAX report to show that carbazole is well below the required 2010 U.S. DOE volumetric and gravimetric hydrogen storage goals. Only Cryo-Compressed Hydrogen [CcH2, or hydrogen pressurized (e.g., to ~350 bar) and stored at cryogenic temperatures] is able to meet the 2015 DOE hydrogen storage goals; all of the other storage methods fall well short of Cryo-Compressed H2.

Carbazole is Well Below U.S. DOE Hydrogen Program Hydrogen Storage Goals

A June, 2011 Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) report (Technical Assessment of Organic Liquid Carrier Hydrogen Storage Systems for Automotive Applications) discusses ANL’s latest technical and economic assessment of carbazole. ANL states:

“... The challenge has been to find suitable organic carriers that have sufficient hydrogen capacity, optimal heat of reaction (∆H), rapid decomposition kinetics, low volatility and long cycle life, and that remain liquid over the working temperature range. Air Products and Chemicals Inc (APCI) investigated many candidates for potential liquid carriers but no one material could satisfy all the requirements for a viable hydrogen storage system. … a practical storage system cannot be built with this polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. The assessment, however, does show the potential of meeting the storage targets with other yet-undiscovered organic liquid carriers that may have the right properties.”

As the DOE and ANL analyses summarized above show, it will require one or more major breakthroughs in order to meet the 2015 DOE hydrogen storage goals, almost tripling the current hydrogen storage performance of carbazole. Good luck to Professors Arlt and Wasserscheid as they try to come up with such a significant breakthrough. The DOE has given up on carbazoles; hopefully the Germans can find an organic liquid that meets all the necessary requirements for a practical energy carrier!

Renewable Energy Storage Webcast

There will be a Renewable Energy Storage Webcast on Friday, December 09, 2011 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM - EST on G+. It will involve a live discussion with Dr. Woodrow Clark (co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, along with his colleagues on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), Matt Fronk (ex-General Motors), Henry Gnacke (ex-GM, current Board Member of Hydrogenics Corp.) and Dr. Byron McCormick (ex-GM).

They will discuss:

• Current demand and outlook for energy storage
• Hydrogen storage overview: technology and current economics
• Relative merits of hydrogen vs. other storage options
• Government policy and incentive programs

The announcement says:

"Utility scale energy storage will be crucial to the future success of renewable energy generation, yet the economics of energy storage remain to be proven. Hydrogen storage, which has made significant inroads in Europe, is now being explored as a cost effective technology in North America."

See you there!

Wordle Word Cloud

Here's a Word Cloud I just made for Fuel Cell Nation at Wordle. I guess I talk about hydrogen...

How Safe is Hydrogen?

Now that I have your attention, I can tell you that it's pretty safe. But explosions like the picture on the left can happen. The photo is from the 2007 article "Blast Waves and Fireballs Generated by Hydrogen Fuel Tank Rupture During Fire Exposure" (Robert Zalosh, Firexplo). (Full Disclosure: Bob Zalosh has consulted for me on hydrogen safety issues at Giner Electrochemical Systems, LLC.)

The above black-and-white photo is an infrared image of the 7.7 m-diameter fireball that was taken 45 ms after rupture of a compressed hydrogen tank. This rupture was caused by putting a 265 kW propane burner directly under a hydrogen tank that had been installed in place of the fuel tank under an SUV. All protection normally provided by a pressure/thermal relief device had been disabled, in order to study the resultant explosion. The hydrogen tank failed catastrophically 12 min 18 seconds after the propane burner was ignited. This was obviously an aggressive test, and would likely only occur to a hydrogen-fueled vehicle if a gasoline leak ignited underneath. (I have not searched for documentation of the explosion resulting from a comparable experiment with a gasoline-fueled car, but I imagine the fireball could be bigger than the above hydrogen-fueled fireball!)

Results more favorable to the use of hydrogen as an automotive fuel have been provided by Michael Swain at the University of Miami, in the 2001 U.S Department of Energy-funded paper Fuel Leak Simulation.

H2 car on Left, Gasoline on Right, t = 0

H2 car on Left, Gasoline on Right, t = 0 min 3 sec. Ignition of both fuels occur. Hydrogen flow rate 2100 scfm. Gasoline flow rate 680 cc/min.

Swain set fire to two cars, one fueled by gasoline and the other by hydrogen. The gasoline car had a 1/16" puncture in a fuel line. The hydrogen car had a leaking hydrogen connector.

H2 car on Left, Gasoline on Right, t = 1 min 0 sec. Hydrogen flow is subsiding.

H2 car on Left, Gasoline on Right, t = 1 min 30 sec. Hydrogen flow almost finished.

Gasoline-fueled car, t = 2 min 20 sec. Deflagration in the interior

The gasoline-filled car was completely engulfed in flames by 2 minutes 20 seconds, while the hydrogen car was essentially undamaged. Whereas the gasoline fire started as the result of a simple, small hole in the fuel line, for the hydrogen fire to occur, it would have taken the catastrophic failure of four separate safety systems, all at the same time, a highly unlikely occurrence.

What this blog post shows is that it is oftentimes difficult to compare the safety of alternative technologies. In some evaluations, sometimes "Technology A" is safer, while with other evaluations it turns out that "Technology B" is safer. Bottom line, hydrogen isn't so bad!

Navy R&D 100 Award

One of this year's recently-announced 2011 R&D 100 Awards is the Autonomous vehicles, fossil-fuel free. This "Cryo-Force Power-Cell System" (CFPCS) was developed by Sierra Lobo Inc., Milan, Ohio, with funding from the Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research (ONR), Arlington, Va., and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC), Newport, R.I. The Award states that the CFPCS is "...an integrated, closed-loop liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen [-fueled] proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell system, [and] has been designed to help unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) transition away from large-battery and fossil fuel technologies. ... The significant technological advancement is the integration of cryogenic pure reactants with a fuel cell system while meeting U.S. Navy specifications of storing 50 kg of oxygen and delivering 0.1 to 100 g/min of oxygen to support a 10 kW fuel cell system."

R&D Magazine describes the CFPCS as "Technology: Closed-loop fuel cell power system." Given that this is not what fuel cell people call a closed-loop system (i.e. one that makes its own fuel and oxidizer, A.K.A. a regenerative fuel cell), but merely a fuel cell system that stores it's exhaust (similar to a closed circuit rebreather SCUBA diving system), I thought I'd check for any other product details that needed clarification.

The untitled picture on the left is shown in the R&D Magazine article as if it is a photograph of the new 10 kw Sierra Lobo CFPCS installed in a UUV test bed. Having never heard that the Navy demonstrated a complete cryogenic reactants-based 10 kW PEM fuel cell system in a UUV form factor, I thought I'd look to see what Sierra Lobo has reported. Well, the picture on the right is Sierra Lobo's 1 kWe brassboard test system as it appears on their Unmanned Underwater Vehicle Power Systems page. I had to use Google to find Sierra Lobo's version of the UUV demonstration, and found their YouTube video:

 

I'm confused why Sierra Lobo has not updated their Web site to include a photograph of their UUV brassboard, or a link to their YouTube video!

Hydrogen and Professional Bicycling

During my recent TV viewing of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge, I had a good look at the jerseys of the Garmin-Cervélo team. (Full Disclosure: I own a Cervélo R3 that I love!) I noticed that one of the sponsors was Tata! Tata, in the form of Tata International's Tata Consultancy Services. I believe that this is the first time a company with a fuel cell tie-in has sponsored a professional bike team! (Tata also sponsored the Cervélo Test Team in 2010 before it was combined with Garmin's team.)

Tata's involvement in fuel cells is two-fold:

In the November 22, 2007 Times of India article Tata-ISRO team up to launch hydrogen-powered vehicle, we learn that Tata teamed with the Indian Space Research Organisation on a pilot project to see whether hydrogen can be used to fuel automobiles. Unfortunately, this project apparently got canceled, because I can't find any subsequent announcements by either Tata or ISRO of a hydrogen-powered demonstration vehicle.

October 07, 2010, in Sun Catalytix Corporation completes $9.5-million Series B funding round, Tata announced that it lead the latest round of Sun's funding. Sun Catalytix is a startup spun out from the MIT research lab of Professor Daniel Nocera, commercializing novel electrolyzer technology. In January, 2010, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) selected Sun Catalytix as one of only 37 recipients from over 3600 applicants for ARPA-E's first-round of funding for transformational energy technologies.

Among their conglomerate's activities, Tata also manufactures bicycles and components.

I wonder when the first company specializing in renewable energy will sponsor a pro sports team?

Electrolysis Explosions in California

By LA Fire Department Photo

On August 9, 2011, an apparent hydrogen/oxygen explosion occurred at the alternative energy firm Rainbow of Hope in the Sylmar section of Los Angeles. Timothy A. Larson, 42, an L.A. firefighter who was on disability leave due to an existing injury, was one of the two inventors critically injured in the blast, as they were thrown into an alley by the force of the explosion. Larson apparently lost an arm an a leg in the blast. In the hospital, William A. Stehl, 68, was induced into a coma with extensive shrapnel wounds in his face.

This latest accident occurred 14 months after Larson's brother (28-year-old Tyson Larson) was killed in a June, 2010 explosion at Realm Industries, in Simi Valley, their father's predecessor alternative fuel business. In 2008, there was an explosion at Realm Industries when it was located in a different building. The 2008 blast was smaller, and there were no serious injuries.

The father, Timothy A. Larson, was among the numerous investors in a New York company formed in 2001 by Stehl, (photo at left by the Adirondack Daily Enterprise) who was indicted in 2010 in New York on charges of bilking more than 300 investors out of $7 million. Stehl claimed he developed an economical process to create energy from water, and allegedly promised his investors guaranteed returns. When the business, BGX Technologies (formerly known as Rainbow Technologies), went under, Timothy A. Larson bought its equipment and had it shipped to California so he could set up Realm Industries with his sons.

Somehow Stehl (and Tyson Larson) got a patent issued for this "technology":

U.S. Patent 7,793,621, Alternative Fuel Engine.

Neither this patent, nor the predecessor patent application, mentions "Brown's Gas" (or "HHO Gas"), which is actually what they were producing. In brief, Brown's gas is produced by simultaneously capturing the two product gases of water electrolysis, hydrogen and oxygen, in a single, unstable product stream. They instead claim they were "modifying the bond angles of water." The slightest spark (or an errant piece of catalyst) will cause an explosion in the product gas mixture, as the hydrogen and oxygen violently recombine back into water. I have no idea why anybody would willingly produce such an unstable gas mixture, and especially why they might try to store it. It seems that Cal/OSHA believes that Stehl and the Larsons were trying to compress and store their hydrogen/oxygen gas mixture at pressure in a pair of 8-foot diameter pressure vessels! Of course, a pressurized hydrogen/oxygen mixture has even more explosive energy than an atmospheric pressure hydrogen/oxygen gas mixture.

One final note: notice how the name of one of Stehl's companies, "BGX", seems to be an acronym for "Brown's Gas"?