Day 1, as well as the golf competition and exhibition hall set-up, has been given over to meetings, courses and a visit to the Hickman Airforce Base to visit the new hydrogen refuelling station.
In the best FCT policy of divide and conquer Mike attended the Fuel Cell Fundamentals short course, Gemma was shuttled off to Hickman Airforce Base, Adrian (who rarely gets away from the computers back at HQ) set up the Stand and I went the NHA course on codes and standards.
Kerry-Ann Codes and Standards
It wasnt that long ago that codes and standards (standards are adopted by codes; codes are regulations) were seen as potentially a major blocker to the commercialisation of fuel cells and hydrogen. Since then a lot of work has been done on not only updating and including hydrogen in existing gaseous based standards but also creating new codes and standards from scratch.
During this afternoon session a small panel of presenters gave their own companies / organisations takes on how they have reacted and acted on these issues. Patrick Serfass, from the National Hydrogen Association, kicked off the afternoon by providing an overview an update of recent updated standards (as well as a shameless plug for the National Hydrogen Association 2007 Annual Conference, which apparently is going to be held in San Antonio, Texas between the 19 22nd March!).
These new standards include: International Fire Code, International Building Code, Vehicular Fuel Systems Code (NFPA 52), National Electrical Code (NFPA 70) and Storage, Use and Handling of Compressed Gases and Cryogenic Fluids in Portable and Stationary Containers, Cylinders, Equipment and Tanks (NFPA 55).
Rick Rocheleau, of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute (60 staff and growing) went through their process of setting up. Rick admitted right at the start that two of the key success points of the process was the over design and working with the officials as part of the design process. Jim Ohi, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) made the very valid point that it is important not to have competing codes and standards but need a streamlined set which can be worked with. Another hurdle, at least in the US, is that the different states have adopted different versions of codes, have modified some of the codes and sometimes simply havent adopted the code or code family. Tom Elzey, of Air Products, backed up a lot of the comments made by Jim in the concern, by companies, of the growth in local standards and some inconsistencies in the codes documents. Tom also mentioned in the growing body of work by the International Standards Organisation (ISO). Finally Terry Musil, Jadoo Power, which has a growing reputation for providing a show-and-tell hands on type presentation, talked about the problems that a growing fuel cell / hydrogen company is facing. The most telling example was when Terry said that he had shipped his hydrogen hydride canister to himself on a twenty four delivery. At the time of presentation, 5 days later, he had still not received the canister due to them being canisters with special permits.
Key Messages out of the session:
- Have patience and time,
- Over-design is better than under design,
- Using an experienced architect / contractor who is familiar with the permitting process this adds invaluable credibility,
- Work with the officials throughout the process,
- Do your research time spent here can save the project from not being allowed. (There are a number of tools in the near market phase - at least in the USA and Canada - which will make this process a lot easier.)
- Finally on an international level there needs to be substantially more work on code harmonisation between ISO, SAE, NFPA etc
In the end where there is a will there is a way . It might just take a lot of time!
Gemma
I spent the first afternoon of the Seminar visiting the fuel cell demonstration programme in operation at Hickham Air Force base. In association with the Hawaiian Centre for Advanced Transportation Technologies the military has established a national demonstration centre at the Hickham Air base to facilitate and demonstrate alternative fuelled vehicles. The programme was started in 2001 and involves several organisations.
The programme involves the operation of three fuel cell vehicles around the base at Hickham. We were able to view all three vehicles (a bus, a van and a tow truck) and the hydrogen refuelling facility.
At present, the refuelling station only produces enough fuel for the daily requirements of the bus and the van which operate around the base. The bus can be filled from empty in four and a half minutes. The bus and van each have two storage tanks on board and each have a driving range of 100 miles. The tow truck has the capability to tow a plane. All three vehicles are designed to stay on the base.
The programme was officially launched last week and has been driven by the requirement for renewable resources on the islands.
Photographs to follow on our return to the office.
Mike
After registration, and duly kitted out with press pass and complimentary Fuel Cell 2006 Seminar logod Hawaiian shirt, I made my way to the morning session on Fuel Cell System Fundamentals. The seminar was attended by around one hundred people who had foregone the organised golf outing to find out how fuel cells worked and also about the current state-of-the-art.
I sat in on four presentations. First was on fuel cell stack and system components, presented by Jack Brouwer. We learned about the differences between the basic formats of different types of fuel cells, as well as the various options for hydrogen reformation. There is no clear winner as far as reforming technology is concerned. Instead, there are trade-offs between hydrogen yield, reaction speed and cost, with developers trying to incrementally improve each vector whilst not unduly compromising another. Reformation was identified as one area where significant R&D effort is still required. Another interesting comment was that the majority of fuel cell system failures arose from balance of plant rather than from the fuel cell stacks themselves.
The second presentation was by Charles Stone of Ballard Power systems, on durability and degradation mechanisms for PEM fuel cells. Materials are, perhaps not surprisingly, one of the main factors influencing fuel cell system life. The R&D effort worldwide has brought about significant improvements in durability and reliability performance, with many of the benchmark target values having already been met. Of course, there is more work to do, and there was a call to change the way that development work is carried out away from normal time testing (which is expensive) and towards more accelerated time lab testing (which requires validation to ensure accuracy). We were told about the various causes of membrane failure, and ways in which they were being mitigated; approaches can be broadly divided into materials approaches and operational approaches. Finally, we were informed about the various sources of membrane contamination and methods commonly deployed to minimise it. As fuel cell markets near, and we can contemplate fuel cells being widely used in a number of non-laboratory conditions, this area looks set to receive more development attention than it has done in the past.
Scott Samuelsen of the National Fuel Cell Research Center (NFCRC) gave the next presentation, on the markets for stationary and portable fuel cell markets. The sweet spot for stationary fuel cell markets is decentralised generation, though centralised generation is still a prospect albeit one which is some way off still. The success of early units such as the UTC PC-25 series gives the industry continued confidence, and the focus is now on certification and fulfilling other legal requirements for commercialisation.
Finally, Scott Samuelsen gave another presentation, this time on transportation markets. The headlines fact from this talk, and the main driver for fuel cell vehicle markets, were some startling figures and projections for global vehicle use and arising environmental implications. In 2000, the global population was 6.1bn, and car availability was 20%. If you assign this an environmental CO2 impact of 1, in 2050, with a world population of 8.9, and vehicle availability of 60%, the environmental CO2 impact will be 4.4. This is clearly unsustainable, and a paradigm shift is therefore required.