Department of Energy Announces $1 million for hydrogen fuel technology way

The Department of energy on October 5 announced new funding, the most promising technology paths in direction to the gasoline equivalent reach of hydrogen as a fuel of the $2 - to $4 per gallon by 2020 to evaluate. The financing help the Department broader give efforts to drivers and businesses more opportunities and to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

To help achieving this aggressive target by 2020, the selected projects will determine through this program cost-efficient materials and processes generates hydrogen from renewables and natural gas. Researchers in these projects will manufacture and supply of technologies, analyze also, to identify the main challenges and priorities; You are to assess further progress and hydrogen costs. This effort will include annual analyses of the key technical challenges with the Department of energy hydrogen analysis models (H2A) in addition to other industry tools. The Department of energy progress warning message displayed.

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Energy Department Investments to Advance Hydrogen Infrastructure

The Energy Department on July 18 announced a $2.4 million investment to collect and analyze performance data for hydrogen fueling stations and advanced refueling components. The five projects—located in California, Connecticut, and Illinois—will track the performance and technical progress of innovative refueling systems at planned or existing hydrogen fueling stations in order to find ways to lower costs and improve operation. These investments are part of the department's commitment to support U.S. leadership in advanced hydrogen and fuel cell research and to help related industries bring hydrogen technologies into the marketplace at lower cost.

As part of a two-year initiative, the Energy Department will make $2.4 million available in fiscal year 2012, with a 50% cost share provided by the award winners. The projects selected for negotiation of award include: California Air Resources Board, which will analyze an operating hydrogen refueling station that uses natural gas to produce hydrogen; California State University and Los Angeles Auxiliary Services, Inc., which will collect data from hydrogen refueling architecture deployed at California State University - Los Angeles; Gas Technology Institute in Des Plaines, Illinois, which will analyze data from five hydrogen fueling stations; and Proton Energy Systems in Wallingford, Connecticut, which will conduct two projects providing operational data from two existing stations that integrate hydrogen generation, compression, storage, and dispensing, as well as deploying an advanced high-pressure electrolyzer at an existing hydrogen fueling station.

These new projects will collect data and monitor the performance of hydrogen fuel stations, advanced components, and other innovative hydrogen technologies using renewable energy or natural gas. By analyzing performance in real-world environments, these projects will help hydrogen fueling equipment manufacturers improve the designs of existing systems. The aim is to achieve higher efficiencies and test new system components. This data will help focus future research and development efforts, driving American manufacturing competitiveness in the next generation of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.

In addition, the Energy Department recently released the final report from its National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) about a technology validation project that collected data from more than 180 fuel cell electric vehicles (EVs). Over six years, these vehicles made more than 500,000 trips and traveled 3.6 million miles, completing more than 33,000 fill-ups at hydrogen fueling stations across the country. The project found that these vehicles achieved more than twice the efficiency of today's gasoline vehicles with refueling times of five minutes for four kilograms of hydrogen. See the DOE Progress Alert and the NREL final report on 180 fuel cell EVs.

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DOE provides up to $2 million for hydrogen fueling stations data collection

DOE announced on 13 March that up to 2 million dollars available this year to collect and fueled, analyze performance data for hydrogen refuel stations and advanced components. DOE tracks performance and technical progress innovative gas stations to find systems ways to reduce costs and improve operations. The funding is part of the Department of obligation to help, bring hydrogen technologies in the mainstream market and provide new opportunities for vehicles that are not dependent on petrol.

Many car manufacturers have announced production plans for fuel cell electric vehicles for retail sale or lease as 2015, and some States invest in hydrogen fuel infrastructure to accommodate these vehicles. The new funding supports projects to monitor the performance of several hydrogen filling stations and advanced components for up to five years. The data and analyses resulting from this initiative help also hydrogen the designs of existing systems to improve fueling equipment manufacturers.

DOE is seeking applicants for this funding opportunity new petrol stations technologies test that could significantly reduce the hydrogen. These include advanced compressor design, the the required number or size of the compressors, at petrol stations commercial premises; reduce Hydrogen supplied tanks with higher capacity and optimal tank pressure, which can reduce the need for compressors and the frequency of deliveries to petrol stations websites and advanced electrolysis, potentially producing hydrogen at higher loads, reducing the cost of hydrogen by reducing the amount of post production compression required. Answers are by May 11. Find out the DOE progress and funding opportunity announcement on funding opportunity Exchange Web site.

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Breaking Up (Hydrogen) No Longer As Hard To Do

It's said that breaking up is hard to do. That's undoubtedly true. But, when the lightning does strike, the electricity is lasting.

What's true for affairs of the heart also holds true for the affairs of hydrogen, as researchers at the DOE's Office of Science's Argonne National Laboratory have recently shown. Hydrogen is an important energetic element that is used in a variety of applications ranging from making semiconductors to powering fuel cells. However, it's also a difficult, expensive one to produce in pure molecular form. Hydrogen usually shows up as a pair of hydrogen atoms (H2).

As Nenad Markovic, a senior chemist at Argonne, noted, "People understand that once you have hydrogen, you can extract a lot of energy from it, but they don’t realize just how hard it is to generate that hydrogen in the first place." Markovic led research at Argonne that recently showed a cheaper, cleaner way to produce pure hydrogen, one that begins with a breakup. Specifically, the team took a look at breaking up water, taking the H2 out of the H2O. Water electrolyzers already do so, typically using special metals like platinum to speed up, or catalyze, the reaction. However, in addition to being costly, platinum is also a better maker-upper than breaker-upper—it is better at fixing single hydrogen atoms up than separating them from water in the first place. See the Energy Blog post.

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