Transition to Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles [1 ed.] 9781611223491, 9781607418061

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Copyright © 2010. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Transition to Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Copyright © 2010. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Transition to Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central,

ENERGY POLICIES, POLITICS AND PRICES

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TRANSITION TO HYDROGEN FUEL CELL VEHICLES

No part of this digital document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means. The publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this digital document, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No Transitionliability to Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, ProQuest Ebook is assumed for incidental or consequential damages2010. in connection withCentral, or arising out of information

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Combined Heat and Power Analysis of Various Markets Jordan A. Cory 2010. ISBN: 978-1-60741-269-4 2010. ISBN: 978-1-61668-377-1 (E-book)

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ENERGY POLICIES, POLITICS AND PRICES

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TRANSITION TO HYDROGEN FUEL CELL VEHICLES

SELIM KOCA EDITOR

Nova Science Publishers, Inc. New York

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Copyright © 2010 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher. For permission to use material from this book please contact us: Telephone 631-231-7269; Fax 631-231-8175 Web Site: http://www.novapublishers.com NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers‘ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works.

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Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Transition to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles / editors, Selim Koca. p. cm. Includes index. ISBNH%RRN 1. Fuel cell vehicles. 2. Fuel cells. I. Koca, Selim. TL221.13.T73 2009 629.22'93--dc22 2009046505

Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York

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CONTENTS Preface Chapter 1

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Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

ix Fuel Cell Vehicle Infrastructure Learning Demonstration: Status and Results K. Wipke, S. Sprik, J. Kurtz and J. Garbak

1

Fuel Cell Vehicle Learning Demonstration: Study of Factors Affecting Fuel Cell Degradation J. Kurtz, K. Wipke and S. Sprik

17

Fuel Cell Vehicle Learning Demonstration: Spring 2008 Results K. Wipke, S. Sprik, J. Kurtz and J. Garbak

41

Analysis of the Transition to Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles and the Potential Hydrogen Energy Infrastructure Requirements David L.Greene, Paul N.Leiby, James Brian, Julie Perez, Margo Melendez, Anelia Milbrandt, Stefan Unnasch, Daniel Rutherford and Matthew Hooks Validation of Hydrogen Fuel and Infrastructure Technology National Renewable Energy Laboratory

65

131

Chapter Sources

139

Index

141

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PREFACE Achieving a successful transition to hydrogen-powered vehicles in the U.S. automotive market will require strong and sustained commitment by hydrogen producers, vehicle manufacturers, transporters and retailers, consumers and governments. The interaction of these agents in the marketplace will determine the real costs and benefits of early market transformation policies, and ultimately the success of the transition itself. Furthermore, the transition to hydrogenpowered transportation faces imposing economic barriers. The authors of this book analyze the hydrogen infrastructure analysis and deployment scenarios, policy options for supporting hydrogen energy infrastructure and vehicle developments during the transition to they hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and the costs of implementing selected policy options to encourage the transition to hydrogen. This book consists of public documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access. Chapter 1 - The ―Controlled Hydrogen Fleet and Infrastructure Demonstration and Validation Project,‖ is a five-year U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) project started in 2004. The purpose of this project is to conduct an integrated field validation that examines the performance of fuel cell vehicles and the supporting hydrogen infrastructure. NREL has analyzed data from almost three years of the five-year project. During this time, 92 vehicles have been deployed, 15 project refueling stations were placed in use, and no fundamental safety issues have been identified. We‘ve analyzed data from over 200,000 individual vehicle trips covering 1,100,000 miles traveled and over 40,000 kg hydrogen produced or dispensed. Public analytical results for this project are in the form of composite data products, which aggregate individual performance into

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Selim Koca

a range that protects the intellectual property and the identity of each company, while still publishing overall status and progress. Chapter 2 - The 5 year "Controlled Hydrogen Fleet and Infrastructure Demonstration and Validation Project" (or Fuel Cell Vehicle Learning Demonstration) was initiated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in 2004. The purpose of the project is to conduct an integrated field validation that simultaneously examines the performance of fuel cell vehicles and the supporting hydrogen infrastructure. Four industry teams are currently operating more than 92 vehicles and 14 refueling stations throughout the United States. More than 40 additional vehicles and several additional refueling stations will be added to the project through 2009. At the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), on-road driving and refueling data are analyzed to assess the technology status and progress, as well as to provide feedback to the hydrogen research and development community. A new/updated set of public results, in the form of composite data products (constructed to protect the intellectual property of the four teams), is released twice a year in the spring and fall. In addition to the public results, detailed analyses results are shared with each participating team. One of the analyses studies fuel cell degradation. The study includes following the fuel cell performance degradation trends, e.g. identifying fuel cell stacks that are decaying at a different rate than others of a similar design and in the same fleet, and explores connections between the real world data and fuel cell degradation. This study differs from other degradation studies in a lab setting or at the single cell level because this study uses full scale fuel cell stacks in vehicles with on-road driving and refueling. In the study, researchers investigate degradation factors by applying multivariate analyses for each individual team and for the combination of all four teams. Detailed results are reviewed with the individual teams in an effort to improve each analysis iteration and comprehension of the results. This paper will detail NREL's study of fuel cell degradation factors by describing the process, reviewing the latest public results, and reporting on any observed dominant factor groups affecting fuel cell degradation. Chapter 3 - The ―Controlled Hydrogen Fleet and Infrastructure Demonstration and Validation Project,‖ also known as the Fuel Cell Vehicle and Infrastructure Learning Demonstration, is a five-year U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) project started in 2004. The purpose of this project is to conduct an integrated field validation that simultaneously examines the performance of fuel cell vehicles and the supporting hydrogen infrastructure. The DOE‘s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has now analyzed data from almost three

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Preface

xi

years of the five-year project. During this time, 92 vehicles have been deployed, 14 project refueling stations were placed in use, and no fundamental safety issues have been identified. We‘ve analyzed data from over 200,000 individual vehicle trips covering 1,100,000 miles traveled and over 40,000 kg hydrogen produced or dispensed. Public analytical results for this project are in the form of composite data products, which aggregate individual performance into a range that protects the intellectual property and the identity of each company, while still publishing overall status and progress. One of the key metrics from the project is fuel cell durability. We analyze all of the field data from the fuel cell vehicles, and make degradation projections based on a theoretical 10% drop in voltage at high current. With additional hours of operation accumulated on the stacks, the fourteam average projection is now 1,200 hours with some individual stacks accumulating more than 1,000 hours. In the next six months we will work to improve the accuracy of the voltage degradation projections by adding a nonlinear fit (or a two-step linear fit) to avoid potentially overestimating the projected time that could occur as the accumulated hours continues to grow. To understand what is causing the stacks to gradually degrade, NREL continues to characterize how each stack is used and performs multivariate analysis on this dataset to examine dominant variables affecting stack voltage degradation rate. Results to date indicate that extracting trends across all four teams is probably not possible due to technical differences among the teams‘ hardware, but that individual results should be useful to the teams individually and for feeding back trends into the research and development program. We‘ve analyzed fuel cell system efficiency at 1/4-power and compared it to the DOE target of 60%; system efficiency results from the four teams ranged from 52.5% to 58.1%. Using data on communication vs. non-communication fills we found that communication fills demonstrated a higher rate of fill than noncommunication fills and the slowest of the non-communication fill rates (0.2 kg/min) are being phased out. We also examined refueling and driving behavior, and found the Learning Demonstration fleet to be representative of national statistics with the exception of fewer late afternoon and weekend trips, an abundance of short trips, and a shorter average distance traveled per day. Finally, we‘ve now published a total of 47 composite data products and made them directly accessible to the public from our Hydrogen Technology Validation Web site. Chapter 4 - This report summarizes the results of the following analyses funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to evaluate alternative scenarios for deployment of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and fueling infrastructure in

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response to the requirements of Section 811 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences Report, The Hydrogen Economy, published in 2004. Chapter 5 - With U.S. DOE cost-share funding assistance, four automobile manufacturer-energy company partnerships are building small fleets of fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen fueling facilities to fuel them. To validate hydrogen fuel cell vehicle and fueling technology, NREL is collecting and analyzing extensive data on the operation of these fleets. Results of this data analysis are available on a public Web site www. nrel.gov/hydrogen

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In: Transition to Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles ISBN: 978-1-60741-806-1 Editors: Selim Koca © 2010 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Chapter 1

FUEL CELL VEHICLE INFRASTRUCTURE LEARNING DEMONSTRATION: STATUS AND RESULTS K. Wipkea, S. Sprika, J. Kurtza and J. Garbakb Copyright © 2010. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

a

Hydrogen Technologies & Systems Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, Colorado, USA b Hydrogen Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technologies Program, U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, DC, USA

The ―Controlled Hydrogen Fleet and Infrastructure Demonstration and Validation Project,‖ is a five-year U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) project started in 2004. The purpose of this project is to conduct an integrated field validation that examines the performance of fuel cell vehicles and the supporting hydrogen infrastructure. NREL has analyzed data from almost three years of the five-year project. During this time, 92 vehicles have been deployed, 15 project refueling stations were placed in use, and no fundamental safety issues have been identified. We‘ve analyzed data from over 200,000 individual vehicle trips covering 1,100,000 miles traveled and over 40,000 kg hydrogen produced or dispensed. Public analytical results for this project are in the form of composite data products, which aggregate individual performance into a range that protects the intellectual property and the identity of each company, while still publishing overall status and progress.

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INTRODUCTION Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) are being developed and tested for their potential as commercially viable and highly efficient zero-tailpipeemission vehicles. Using hydrogen fuel and high-efficiency fuel cell vehicles provides environmental and fuel feedstock diversity benefits to the United States. Hydrogen could be derived from a mixture of renewable sources, natural gas, biomass, coal, and nuclear energy, enabling the United States to reduce emissions and decrease its dependence on foreign oil. Numerous technical barriers remain before hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are commercially viable. Significant resources from private industry and government are being devoted to overcoming these barriers. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is working with industry partners to develop these technologies through its Hydrogen, Fuel Cells & Infrastructure Technologies (HFCIT) Program. This multi-faceted program simultaneously addresses hydrogen production, storage, delivery, conversion (fuel cells), technology validation, deployment (education), market transformation, safety, and codes and standards. DOE has previously identified many key technical barriers, such as hydrogen storage and fuel cell durability. These barriers are being addressed through additional research. Other challenges may become apparent through integrated, real-world application of these technologies. Prior to this project, the number of fuel cell vehicles in service has been small, and vehicle operation was focused primarily in California. The result was limited quantity and geographic diversity of the data collected. To address vehicle and refueling infrastructure issues simultaneously, DOE is conducting a large-scale ―learning demonstration‖ involving automotive manufacturers and fuel providers. This learning demonstration, titled the ―Controlled Hydrogen Fleet and Infrastructure Demonstration and Validation Project,‖ is a cornerstone of the HFCIT Program‘s technology validation effort, spanning from 2004 to 2010.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES AND TARGETS This project‘s objective is to conduct parallel learning demonstrations of hydrogen infrastructure and FCVs to allow the government and industry to assess progress towards technology readiness. We are identifying the current status of the technology and tracking its evolution over the five-year project

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Fuel Cell Vehicle Infrastructure Learning Demonstration

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duration. In particular, we are tracking differences between the first- and second-generation FCVs. The DOE‘s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) works to provide DOE and industry with maximum value from the data produced by this ―learning demonstration.‖ We seek to understand the progress toward the technical targets and provide that information to the Hydrogen Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technologies (HFCIT) research and development (R&D) activities. This information will allow the program to move more quickly toward cost-effective, reliable hydrogen FCVs and supporting refueling infrastructure. The ability to feed results back into to the research and development as an integrated part of DOE‘s program makes this project unique compared to typical demonstration projects. Fuel cell stack durability is critical to customer acceptance of fuel cell vehicles, and will be discussed in this paper. Although 2,000-hour durability in 2009 is considered acceptable to validate progress, a 5,000-hour lifetime (equivalent to approximately 100,000 miles) is estimated to be a requirement for market acceptance. Vehicle range is also an important consumer expectation. Although many factors contributed to the failure of batteryelectric vehicles to gain market acceptance despite California government mandates, limited vehicle driving range and long charging times were widely accepted as significant contributors. Finally, hydrogen production cost is a key metric because consumers are much less likely to purchase an alternative fuel vehicle if the fuel is significantly more expensive than gasoline.

AUTO INDUSTRY AND REFUELING PARTNERS Automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are leading three of the four teams, and an energy provider is leading the fourth. Figure 1 shows the teaming arrangement of the four teams along with their first-generation fuel cell vehicles, and Figure 2 shows examples of the four types of hydrogen refueling stations. The major companies making up the four teams are as follows: Chevron and Hyundia-Kia Chrysler and BP Ford Motor Company and BP General Motors and Shell

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Figure 1. Photographs of the Four Teams' First-Generation Vehicles with Small Inset Photos Showing the Second-Generation Vehicles

Figure 2. Four Examples of Hydrogen Production and Refueling Facilities

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DATA ANALYSIS APPROACH AND TOOLS NREL‘s approach to accomplishing the Learning Demonstration‘s objectives is structured around a highly collaborative relationship with each of the four industry teams. We are receiving raw technical data on both the hydrogen vehicles and refueling infrastructure that allows us to perform unique and valuable analyses across all four teams. Our primary objectives are to feed the current technical challenges and opportunities back into the DOE Hydrogen R&D Program and assess the current status and progress toward targets. To protect the commercial value of these data for each company, we established the Hydrogen Secure Data Center (HSDC) to house the data and perform our analyses. To ensure value is fed back to the hydrogen community, we publish composite data products (CDPs) twice a year at technical conferences [1-2]. These data products report on the progress of the technology and the project, focusing on the most significant results. Additional CDPs are conceived as additional trends and results of interest are identified. We also provide detailed analytical results from each individual company‘s data back to them to maximize the industry benefit from NREL‘s analysis work and obtain feedback on our methodologies. These individual results are not made available to the public. To process such a large data set (second-by-second data from over 200,000 vehicle trips), we have created a specialized analysis tool at NREL called the Fleet Analysis Tool (FAT). This tool enables us to convert the data into a common format, perform all of the predefined analyses, and then study the results graphically. The tool is unique in that it lets us quickly compare data from within a team (stack to stack) or between teams. It also is the mechanism by which we create our composite data products, which pull individual results from each team into an aggregate result.

COMPOSITE DATA PRODUCTS – PUBLIC RESULTS Fuel Cell Operation and Efficiency Researchers from the automotive companies measured fuel cell system efficiency from select vehicles on a vehicle chassis dynamometer at several steady-state points of operation. NREL worked with the data and the

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companies to ensure that appropriate balance-of-plant electrical loads were included. This allowed the results to be compared to the DOE target by basing them on the entire fuel cell system rather than just the stack. DOE‘s technical target for net system efficiency at 1/4-power is 60%. Data from the four Learning Demonstration teams showed a range of net system efficiency from 52.5% to 58.1%, which is very close to the target. These results have not changed since they were first published because they are baseline results for first- generation vehicles. The teams will test second-generation systems as soon as they are introduced in 2008 to evaluate any efficiency changes as the systems get closer to technology readiness. Since a fuel cell system‘s peak efficiency is normally at low powers (typically 10% to 25%), we evaluated the fuel cell system operation from a number of different perspectives to better understand whether the unique performance characteristics of the fuel cell system were being maximized. As reported in the last progress report [3], a significant amount of time is being spent at low fuel cell system power. In fact, the teams‘ average amount of time spent at