Hydrogen

The most abundant element in our galaxy, 10 times as abundant as helium the next most common. The lightest and simplest of chemical elements.

Identified in 1766 by Henry Cavendish, and left behind a little water after burning it was named Hydrogen which is from the Greek words meaning water maker. It is invisible and has no taste.

There is very little natural pure hydrogen in our atmosphere but it is common in stars and suns. However it is available as the most plentiful substance, as two thirds of water is hydrogen. A large percentage of the fuel gas used in cooking is or was hydrogen.

Hydrogen is in wide use for a variety of processes, and even in the 1970's was being reported as having one of the fastest growing demands in the world. Here we are concentrating on it as a fuel, not interested in driving spacecraft, but cars and other engines as an alternative to petrol.

Hydrogen as a fuel

Hydrogen use is not new, and the first thought that comes to many is of the Hindenburg, the German Zeppelin airship that crashed in flames in 1937. However the same volume of petrol vapor would have been just as dangerous. Although many people at the moment are nervous of it, the argument is that properly handled it is no more dangerous than petrol or other gas cylinders in general use.

A conventional petrol engine can be fueled with hydrogen, however there is no pollution all that comes out of the exhaust is steam that can be condensed to produce water that is pure enough to drink.

Modern applications of hydrogen

The major driving force up to recently in the development of hydrogen as fuel for vehicles is the fact that it is pollution free. Currently it costs more to produce hydrogen than petrol, due to the cost of producing electricity.

For some time Busses in Chicago have been running on Hydrogen.

BMW unveiled in April 2002, a sporty car fueled by hydrogen. The 4.4 liter V8 engine can propel it at up to 135mph for 180 miles at an average of 16 miles per gallon from one filling of the fuel tank, that holds 9.5 kg of compressed hydrogen. The tank is the size of a beer keg and is multi layered for safety being able to withstand any crash or fire. The gas is compressed 800 times and stored at minus 235 degrees C.

Refueling is done using a laser controlled robot that locates the pressure sealed nozzle and fills the tank in around 3 minutes. Currently one is in Munich and hydrogen costs 60p a liter (£2.72 a gallon), next year the first station in London opens, being launched by BP, and pollution free busses will be their first regular clients.

It is said that from January 2003 a new Rolls Royce will be available that is hydrogen powered and the UK built mini is currently having a version developed.

Petrol

Experts predict that petrol will either become unavailable, having run out or will become very, very much more expensive so will not be in general use by 2050. The Independent Inquiry society looked at this some time ago and concluded that it is unlikely that all reserves will be used up, and that their are probably an enormous amount still to be discovered particularly at the edge of continual shelf, however the cost of developing the technology to get at it and the cost of extraction in open oceans will make it many times as expensive as current fuel costs.

Current policies on Hydrogen

UK April 18th 2002, UK Budget, Chancellor Gordon Brown removes duty of Hydrogen as a fuel as an incentive to its use. Transport minister David Jamiason said "currently the UK government see hydrogen as just one option for alternative fuels".

BMW predicts that hydrogen gas stations will be the norm in Britain and throughout Europe by 2050, replacing most petrol stations.

Reported in the UK Daily Mail 19th April 2002, "leading motor industry economist Professor Garel Rhys of Cardiff University Business School, said the government is backing too many alternative fuels that are going nowhere. It should instead concentrate more on Hydrogen. Professor Rhys added Labour should scrap most alternative fuel programmes. Electric cars lack battery power, liquid petroleum gas relies on petrol, which is running out. Hydrogen power is the way forward.... ".

Hydrogen production

Hydrogen is produced by passing an electrical charge through catalyst to release hydrogen and oxygen from water.

Another method of manufacture involves passing steam over white hot coke, or more recently mixing steam and hydrocarbons in some form. We are not covering these option further here, as they either require material that will become scarce or produce pollution so do not have a long term future.

As hydrogen can be made from water in theory it can be made where required, by taking the electricity to the water, however there are two problems in the long term, firstly a large percentage of the electricity is lost in the distribution process, and you also have to have a way of economically producing large volumes of electricity. On land the most cost effective way may be using Hydropower, electricity from waterfalls etc, could be taken short distances to where hydrogen could be created and then moved by boat.

The amount of Hydrogen that you can produce is therefore dependent on the amount of electricity and the cost of production is mostly effected by the cost of producing the electricity and transportation costs. To switch from petrol to hydrogen, is attractive to distribution companies if the hydrogen can be delivered through the same delivery points, and within Europe this means delivery by sea. The actual weight of hydrogen in transportation depends on the pressure as a gas it takes up a large amount of space, and is very light, being used to lift airships, as a liquid it is still considerably lighter than water, however it does need to be held with pressure containers and kept cool. There is no problem with bulk delivery by road tanker.

In the longer term as demand increases, and hydrogen cost decreases you will get to a point where many forms of electric generation will become either uneconomic or unacceptable from a pollution viewpoint and be then moving over to using hydrogen. To produce hydrogen from electricity produced with hydrogen would not be viable as natural inefficiencies and transmission loses would reduce greatly the amount got back. Therefore other means have to be found to produce hydrogen in volume.

Wave and deep sea (OTEC) are the only viable options that can be seen.

Hydrogen within the floating kingdom

For some considerable time, the floating kingdom has defined hydrogen power as the main engine fuel as it is the only one that can be produced from within the kingdom, and the only one that could be used through sections of islands without a fume or pollution problem. Hydrogen engines require no chimney or exhaust, and produces no pollution or harmful effect on people.

Early designs of the kingdom used wave power to produce electricity and turned surplus electricity into hydrogen that then drove the engines to move the kingdom about and also was used in engines to drive generators if wave power was not sufficient for power needs. Adding OTEC power capacity from deep sea water temperature change, has a method of producing electricity with no fuel cost, although build costs are quite high.

Over the last few years the rest of society has started to take a lot more interest in hydrogen as a fuel. This has caused a rethink within the economics of the floating kingdom as we realized that we in theory could produce hydrogen far more cost effectively than anywhere else and being located for ocean delivery conveniently to the USA and Europe have an opportunity.

Location within the kingdom

The major concerns this produces is one of safety in manufacture, storage and transportation. The location of plants, loading, and other factors have to be considered carefully. Planning has to be done on the two theories that all steps have to be taken to make the processes safe and so that nothing will go wrong and secondly on the theory that something does and being able to limit the damage, with no damage to the structure of the kingdom.

Early designs had a sharp front end to the kingdom as a separate piece in front of the sea wall at the front. The area inside this front piece was where the hydrogen was made and stored. Exporting from this point would be very difficult.

The latest designs have the OTEC power plants, hydrogen manufacture and engines to move the kingdom a small amount all within the airport units, at the rear of the kingdom, with storage towards the very back towards the seaward side of each unit. These structures are extremely large, and robust to any damage, and we believe that having a large number of tanks, in sealed areas that can be flooded with an inert gas that will not burn, plus foam and water pumps to handle any risk. The risks are similar to an aircraft crashing on landing or takeoff.

Tankers to export hydrogen would tie up either on the outside or behind the units if the weather was bad.

We propose two airport islands to allow for any problems, one would normally be in use by airlines and the second by small planes, but both able to double for the other should a crash happen making a runway unusable. The seaport would be between them, although larger cruise ships could also come alongside towards the front of the units.

The smaller satellite islands would also have a small amount of generating and storage capacity but this is viewed currently as a means of powering the units and storing spare energy. We do not propose export capacity within these units.

Links

Hydrogen cars

http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/trek/4wd/hydrogen.htm About hydrogen cars

ford motor company this week introduced a hydrogen-powered car http://media.ford.com/newsroom/release_display_test.cfm...

CNN.com - Sci-Tech - Could hydrogen be the fuel of the future- - March 16, 2001 CNN report on hydrogen car developments.

Enter 'Hydrogen and car' into any search engine to get a list of thousands to choose from.

Making hydrogen

Shell Global Solutions - Products and services - gasification and hydrogen manufacture - Shell articles on Hydrogen as a bi product from refining, steam and natural gas and steam and coal processes.

Hydrogen a single page that covers many ways of producing hydrogen and maybe a good reference point to explore further.

Others that you may find helpful:

	Arizona Hydrogen - Manufacture a range of gas generators for the production of hydrogen and oxygen.
	Atomic Hydrogen Source - The H-flux Atomic Hydrogen Source thermally dissociates hydrogen in an electron bombardment heated tungsten capillary. Used for surface science and thin film technology.
	California Hydrogen Business Council - Harnessing the Power of Hydrogen For the Future of Mankind.
	Elettronica Todescato - Production generators of hydrogen and oxygen from water - Production generators of hydrogen and oxygen that produce the two gases with the solo use of electric energy and water.
	Energy Consultants, LLP - Offers business advisory services for harvesting revenue from fuel cell, hydrogen, wind power and other emerging energy or renewable energy technologies.
	EPOCH Machine Enterprise Co., Ltd. - Manufacturer of oxy-hydrogen generators, solar ultraviolet heaters.
	General Hydrogen - Develops technologies and invests in companies for hydrogen infrastructure.
	H2Gen Innovations Inc. - Dedicated to developing, manufacturing and bringing to market low-cost, small-scale hydrogen generators for industrial applications and for the emerging fuel cell vehicle and distributed fuel cell power generation markets.
	HSSSI Electrolyzers - Design and manufacture of electrochemical cells using proton exchange membrane technology. Qualified for use at 3,000 psi on board U.S. Nuclear submarines and are in operational use aboard Royal Navy nuclear submarines.
	The Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Investor - Hydrogen, fuel cells, and investing in an emerging technology. Links to the information available on the Internet.
	Hydrogen Systems N.V. : Hydrogen energy - Custom-engineered hydrogen solutions.
	Hydrogen Ventures - Financing hydrogen and new energy technologies
	HydrogenSource -- Fuel processing for fuel cells - Manufacturer of natural gas, gasoline and other hydrocarbon reformers which produce hydrogen.
	International Fuel Cells - Develops fuel cells and related fuel processing technologies for the transportation, stationary and portable markets. IFC fuel cells power plants provide power to the space shuttle orbiter fleet. IFC is a subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation (UTX).
	Norsk Hydro Electrolysers - Manufacturer of alkaline electrolysis hydrogen generators, based in Norway.
	PEM Fuel cells - Renewable and Hydrogen Energy and fuel cell Technology Product Showcase
	PowerNova Technologies Corporation - Develops and commercializes hydrogen production technology for fuel cells.
	Proton Energy Systems Inc. - Manufacturer of proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers and fuel cell products.
	Quantiam Technologies Inc. - Focused on the development and commercialization of new products for the hydrogen economy as well as extreme materials applications in the aerospace, automotive and chemical process industries.
	Stuart Energy Systems - Provides onsite water electrolyzers, which use alkaline electrolysis to supply hydrogen for transportation, industrial and regenerative power applications.
	Ztek Corp. - Zirconverter®, a planar type of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), is being developed and marketed for distributed and central utility electric generation, commercial cogeneration, space power applications and transportation, as well as for environmental and chemical industries.

Search for 'hydrogen and manufacture' in any major search engine to find thousands more links.

Please let us know if you know of any others you feel we should include, or if you have problems getting to any of our links.