1 INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

1.1 The current relevance of fuel

cells and hydrogen

The pollution from motor cars is, particularly in city areas, becoming in-
creasingly unacceptable to people living in, visiting or working in the cities
of the world. Demands for zero-emission vehicles have been voiced, and the
automobile industry is facing louder and louder criticism for not addressing
the problem. The simplest solution to reducing emissions is to make the ve-
hicle more efficient. This is the route taken by several European car manu-
facturers, using a combination of low-weight car structure, low air resis-
tance, high performance but low fuel consumption engines such as the
common-rail diesel engine, brake energy recuperation, computer-optimised
gearshift operation, engine close down as an alternative to idling, and so on.
Presently, this leads to fuel consumption for a four-person standard car of
about 3 litres of diesel fuel per 100 km or 4-5 litres of gasoline if the less effi-
cient Otto engines are used. Three litres of diesel fuel per 100 km corre-
sponds to 0.1 GJ or 1 MJ km -1. The fuel-to-wheel efficiency is about 60%
higher than that of current average passenger cars (27% rather than 17%),
while the overall efficiency of fuel-to-transportation work (i.e., the transpor-

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tation service delivered to the end-user, as e.g. measured by the number of

passengers times the distance driven, cf. section 6.2) is as much as around
230% (2.3 times) better than that of present average cars (12-13 km per litre
of gasoline, the energy content of which is about 10% lower than that of die-
sel fuel). The average efficiency of current-stock passenger cars is lowest in
the USA and highest in Europe, a fairly direct consequence of the prevailing
fuel prices seen by the customers (i.e., including subsidies and taxes).
Other options include electric and fuel cell-based vehicles. If the original
fuel is of fossil origin, environmental pollution depends of the total well-to-
transportation service energy use. For electric vehicles, assuming a motor ef-
ficiency of 80%, a transmission efficiency of 98% and a 40% fuel-to-electri-
city conversion efficiency at current state-of-the-art power plants, the well-
to-wheel efficiency calculated after consideration of battery-cycle losses is
26%. For fuel cell cars, the hydrogen fuel-to-wheel efficiency is about 36%
(see section 6.2), implying a fuel-to-wheel efficiency of around 25% for the
chain starting from hydrogen production from natural gas, over proton ex-
change membrane (PEM) fuel cells and electric motors to wheels, all for a
standard mixed driving cycle.
In the electric car case, pollution is moved from street level to the locations
of power plants, which normally allow for better exhaust gas cleaning and in
any case dispersal at higher altitudes that rarely leads to pollutant concen-
trations as high as for currently common vehicle exhaust. It follows from
these estimates that the higher cost of electric or fuel cell vehicle solutions
will be difficult to defend, relative to the simple efficiency improvements of
thermodynamical engines using conventional fuels, and the real case for
electric or fuel cell vehicles is therefore fully dependent on a transition to
non-fossil fuels. Of course, this does not exclude that fossil fuel-based fuel
cell vehicles could serve as demonstration projects during an interim period,
where the infrastructure for hydrogen production based on sustainable en-
ergy sources is not yet available.
If one considers hydrogen produced from renewable energy such as wind
power and takes the efficiency of state-of-the-art electrolysis plants as being
near 80%, this also leads to an overall primary energy-to-wheel efficiency of
about 25% for a fuel cell vehicle, but this time without emission of pollutants.
For vehicles operated purely on batteries, the corresponding efficiency is
around 50%, but the weight penalty of battery operation is usually higher
than that of fuel cell operation, also if this includes a reformer and some
battery storage. If both batteries and fuel cell technologies were economically
viable, the optimisation would consist of balancing the weight and required
engine rating to obtain the lowest cost. However, none of the two technolo-
gies is economical today, and a central question for the role of fuel cells is
whether cost reductions will be easier to achieve than for batteries, despite a
certain level of technology similarity.

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 1 INTRODUCTION

While direct pollution from motor vehicles, whether involving particles,

SO2 or NOK emissions only partially reduced by filters and catalytic devices,
is the most visible social (health) and environmental impact, emissions of
greenhouse gases have increasingly become included in the list of impacts
not to be tolerated in the future. The reason is the implied additional warm-
ing of the atmosphere and the negative consequences it may have, both re-
garding the stability of overall climate and also in particularly vulnerable re-
gional contexts. Presently, climatic impacts seem to top the list of reasons to
move away from fossil fuels. A few decades ago, supply security and re-
source depletion were quoted as the key reasons to develop alternatives
based upon sustainable energy sources. The temporary decline in such wor-
ries was due to the halt of the exponential growth in energy use, achieved
after the oil supply crises in 1973 and 1979 by concerted efforts to improve
efficiencies of energy use. The most advanced industrialised nations have
not increased their total energy used during the past three decades, despite
continued economic growth. However, the transportation sector has in many
parts of the world continued to increase its energy use, only compensated for
by less usage of fuels for space heating and other sectors seemingly more
amenable to efficiency improvements than cars, ships and aircraft. As the
motor car example given above shows, there are no technical reasons for not
improving the efficiency of vehicles for transportation, and indeed, catching
up in this sector finally seems to be forthcoming.
It is clear that the resource issue is not gone permanently. Production of
fossil fuels, or at least of oil, is expected to reach its maximum sometime in
the next decade or two and then to decline despite enhanced recovery tech-
niques, as the rate of discovering new wells continues to diminish. This will
necessarily lead to price increases, although likely in an irregular way, due
to the fact that the actual production costs are still very low in some regions,
notably in the Middle East, and prices are therefore dependent on the day-
to-day market situation and on political issues such as cartel ceilings on pro-
duction and warfare in the regions of production. These conditions make the
development of alternatives to use of fossil fuels increasingly more attrac-
tive, both for economic reasons and also for reasons of security of supply.
Because renewable energy sources are more evenly available geographically
(although the best mix of renewable sources may vary from one region to
another), they are seen as attractive in scenarios placing emphasis on local
control, often referred to as "decentralisation", but certainly do not eliminate
the need for transmission and trade of electricity and (renewable-based) fu-
els or for developing suitable forms of energy storage (see Sorensen, 2004a).
The reasoning presented above will be qualified by the detailed discussion
offered in the following chapters.
The possibility of using hydrogen as a general energy carrier has long
been recognised (see, e.g., Sorensen, 1975, 1983, 1999; Sorensen et al., 2004).

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The issues raised for attention include hydrogen production, storage and
transmission, as well as the use of hydrogen, notably as fuel for fuel cells.
The current hope is that fuel cells will experience a significant price reduc-
tion along with the development of new fields of application and that infra-
structure problems will eventually be solved. This could happen through a
series of steps, with hydrogen first being used in those niche areas where the
required change in infrastructure is modest, such as fuel cell buses travelling
by fixed routes from a single filling station. The present price of producing
hydrogen fuel (whether from fossil or renewable energy) is higher than that
of the fuels already in use, but is expected to decline if the market expands
and production technology is refined. The cost of central hydrogen storage
in underground facilities such as those already in use for natural gas will
have a rather insignificant impact on the overall cost of hydrogen usage,
while that of transmission is expected to be similar to or slightly higher than
the cost of natural gas transmission. Local hydrogen storage costs, e.g. using
pressure containers, are not negligible but still have a fairly modest influence
on overall cost, while the critical cost item remains the fuel cell converter
used in all cases where the end-use energy form is electricity, including trac-
tion through electric motors. Current fuel cell costs are way above direct cost
viability, and progress in fuel cell manufacture, performance and durability
are thus the critical development items for allowing the penetration of hy-
drogen as a general energy carrier.
The disposition of the book is as follows: hydrogen production by a long
list of technical or biological systems, storage and transmission in Chapter 2,
fuel cell basics in Chapter 3, fuel cell systems in Chapter 4, followed by im-
plementation issues (including safety and norms) and scenarios for future
use in Chapter 5, economic issues such as direct and life-cycle costs in
Chapter 6 and rounding up in Chapter 7. The distinctions are not water-
tight, as it is often useful to mention systems options in connection with in-
dividual technologies or to mention implementation issues along with the
technologies, but cross-references are provided.

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