« Researchers to Sequence Six Strains of Cyanobacteria in Pursuit of Biofuel Production | Main | Cummins Selects Corning For Emissions Control for Medium- and Heavy-Duty Diesels »
Linde Opens New Hydrogen Center Near Munich; Sees 6 Million Hydrogen Cars in Europe by 2020
11 October 2006
 |
| Linde’s concept of a universal cryogenic filling station. Click to enlarge. |
The Linde Group—the new name for the combined Linde AG and BOC Group plc—has officially inaugurated the Linde Hydrogen Center in Lohhof near Munich, Germany. The €3-million (US$3.8-million) center combines the functions of a hydrogen filling station with those of a technology test center, a training center and a presentation platform.
The core of the facility is a filling station which supplies a test fleet of hydrogen-fueled cars and buses with both liquid hydrogen (LH2) and compressed gaseous hydrogen (CGH2). Linde expects to fill on average 10 hydrogen vehicles a day—making the center, according to the company, one of the busiest hydrogen filling stations in the world. The center’s measurement and control equipment also provides engineers, customers and partners with valuable insights for further research and development.
Linde is involved in a large number of initiatives as a hydrogen supplier, including ARGEMUC (Airport Munich), CEP (Clean Energy Partnership), CUTE (Clean Urban Transport for Europe) and Zero Regio (Zero Emission Region). Through its acquisition of the British gas company The BOC Group plc, Linde gained a further 100 hydrogen plants worldwide.
Linde has also developed a mobile filling systems—the traiLH2—which allows vehicles to be refueled with liquid hydrogen and gaseous hydrogen, and which can be operated independently from an external electric power supply.
Linde is focusing in its research and development on the renewable production of hydrogen, especially bio-hydrogen.
In cooperation with specialists in the field, we are advancing the development of several methods for biomass conversion into hydrogen. We are confident that soon all the hydrogen required by the Linde Hydrogen Center can be produced by sustainable production methods.
—Dr Aldo Belloni, member of the Executive Board of Linde AG
Separately, the CEO of the Linde Group, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Reitzle, said during his plenary address at the 15th Aachen Colloquium “Automobile and Engine Technology” that the company conservatively expects to see more than 6 million hydrogen-powered cars in Europe by the end of the next decade.
Reitzle said it would be necessary to spend around 3.5 billion euros to build a hydrogen infrastructure of 2,800 filling stations for the European car market, but high oil prices would eventually offset the cost.
He urged German automotive companies to be at the forefront in developing ways to integrate the alternative fuel into future cars. “"It would be a shame if Germany were to sleep through a trend in hydrogen technology the way we slept through hybrids,” he said.
October 11, 2006 in Europe, Hydrogen | Permalink | Comments (33) | TrackBack (0)
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/22062/6390080
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Linde Opens New Hydrogen Center Near Munich; Sees 6 Million Hydrogen Cars in Europe by 2020:
Comments
"Linde expects to fill on average 10 hydrogen vehicles a day—making the center, according to the company, one of the busiest hydrogen filling stations in the world."
What a GAS.
I,m sure they will be selling other gasses from the process to offset the cost of building this.
Posted by: saabnut | Oct 11, 2006 5:11:06 AM
Apparently, hydrogen is made from water so a really abundant fuel. There is a lot of water in Europe, particularly UK, so 6 million vehicles should be easy peasy. Looking outside, its raining in England today.....all that lovely CO2 free hydrogen going down the drains.....
Posted by: John Baldwin | Oct 11, 2006 7:24:43 AM
In a zillion dollar gamble like fuels are you dont leave any remotely p[ossible direction undeveloped. As such the h2 sations are simply covering all bases.
Posted by: wintermane | Oct 11, 2006 7:25:04 AM
"Apparently, hydrogen is made from water so [it is] a really abundant fuel."
Not so. The key ingredient in the process Linde uses is natural gas. Ceterus Paribus, it is cheaper and more enviromentally friendly, to compress the natural gas and use it, rather than producing hydrogen first.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz | Oct 11, 2006 8:52:33 AM
I heard that hydrogen is made from happy thoughts and press releases, actually. Now I'm hearing it comes from reforming natural gas or by burning coal to make electricity for electrolysis?
Posted by: Sid Hoffman | Oct 11, 2006 9:01:02 AM
What a joke.
Posted by: Nick | Oct 11, 2006 9:12:31 AM
John Baldwin,
it is not CO2 free, if you look at how they make the hydrogen. Sure the car produces steam while driving down the road, and everyone will go..."wow..." But what these people never seem to dwell on is the umpteem billion pounds of other carbon intensive fuels they need to burn in the first place to produce all the energy to split the water and get the hydrogen in the first place! And producing hydrogen from water is extremly! energy intensive.
It's so frustrating. They usually only tell half the story, which is in essense a lie. If hydrogen plants would mention the major amounts of CO2 they're pumping into the atmosphere making their hydrogen so that people could steam down the road in their blissful ignorance, there wouldn't be such a clamour for it. It's much more efficient/cheap to just put that electricity used for electrolysis straight into batteries/ultra-caps.
Posted by: John W. | Oct 11, 2006 9:16:16 AM
Windmill + water = Hydrogen
Where's the carbon?
Posted by: pizmo | Oct 11, 2006 9:19:26 AM
John W. -
Carmakers only tell half the story because they want to get out from under the onerous TAILPIPE emissions regulations that make their products look dirty.
The gas and nuclear industries are keeping schtumm about how they intend to produce the hydrogen because the fuel makes their dirty processes look clean.
Politicians only tell half the story because they are scientifically illiterate and/or in bed with the aforementioned industries. Case in point: Dubya claimed nuclear power was not just safe and clean (highly debatable) but also renewable (uranium grows on trees, you see...)
I agree with Robert Schwartz here: on-road vehicles should run on hydrocarbons for the foreseeable, preferably liquid ones with high energy density (esp. volumetric). Where feasible, biofuels should be preferred.
Posted by: Rafael Seidl | Oct 11, 2006 9:33:22 AM
Anyone know if there's any public funding involved in this?
I wonder if he said "10 hydrogen vehicles a day" with a straight face? LMAO.
Posted by: Neil | Oct 11, 2006 9:37:04 AM
"Windmill + water = Hydrogen"
Windmill + generator = Energy
Who needs the hydrogen?
Posted by: JMartin | Oct 11, 2006 9:47:05 AM
Who needs the hydrogen?
You didn't answer my question. Where's the carbon in the "equation" I wrote?
Electricity has this funny quality of needing to be used in real time. If there's a surplus of it, with nothing to take advantage of it, then the energy is wasted. Hydrogen is a storage medium.
Posted by: pizmo | Oct 11, 2006 9:56:26 AM
Battery electric cars provide 3-4x the efficiency of hydrogen cars.
That means $4 / gallon hydrogen vs. $1 / gallon electricity.
Battery electric cars can be produced today & in the coming years we'll see them actually for sale.
A battery electric car can provide amazing performance & be efficient at the same time... not possible with hydrogen or gasoline / diesel cars.
Battery electric cars require no new infrastructure.
Hydrogen cars, I'm guessing, represent the oil & gas industries last gasp at trying to keep the world using hydrocarbon fuels. (hydrogen gas comes mostly now from reforming natural gas)
But you can't change the laws of physics. So, hydrogen loses. Batteries win.
I'm surprised that Europeans, who I thought were more sensible than most, are being led down the same Hydrogen hype path.
Posted by: Matt | Oct 11, 2006 11:47:46 AM
Battery electric cars provide 3-4x the efficiency of hydrogen cars.
So batteries last forever? Please provide the numbers which show that 3-4x efficiency number -- both with current and projected technology.
That means $4 / gallon hydrogen vs. $1 / gallon electricity.
The only relevant number is cost per mile over the lifetime of the vehicle. Fuel cells can also be used in a cogen fashion when parked.
Posted by: pizmo | Oct 11, 2006 12:05:58 PM
To answer pizmo's question, the carbon is in all the energy and materials used to design, manufacture, assemble, truck/ship, and set up the windmill in the first place, at which point you have a source of energy which is low maintenance (but not maint free) and several times more expensive than the cheapest forms of electricity. It's also several times more expensive than hydrogen reforming from natural gas, which is why no one creates hydrogen that way.
If you want to play that game, then GM's vehicles are all 85% renewable because you COULD make them run on ethanol. Sure, hydrogen COULD be made from renewable sources, but it isn't. Ever.
Posted by: Sid Hoffman | Oct 11, 2006 12:08:36 PM
Matt -
politicians are like lemmmings...
In any case, hydrogen advocates don't have as much of a lead on the biofuel crowd as they do in the US. Moreover, the EU farm lobby is a fearsome behemoth and nuclear policy is left to the nation states; even France isn't planning to build any new ones right now. Therefore, I expect hydrogen will never take off in Europe.
Linde is a huge industrial gases company. They'll find other markets for the hydrogen (short-hop aviation based on new aircraft designs, perhaps?)
Curiously, European pols and carmakers appear to have missed the emerging Li-ion based HEV/PHEV/BEV technology altogether (with a few exceptions).
Posted by: Rafael Seidl | Oct 11, 2006 12:48:02 PM
Several well-to-wheel studies have shown that hydrogen made from fossil fuels is madness, both from an emissions as well as from an efficiency point of view (as Robert Schwarz says: better compress the NG for CNG cars - no need to make the inefficient detour via hydrogen).
H2 from wind is very inefficient and expensive, whereas biohydrogen is foolish because the biomass can better be transformed into other biofuels rightaway.
According to the EU's latest well-to-wheel analysis of over 70 fuel paths, hydrogen is out, and biogas is in. (Biogas being the most environmentally friendly transport fuel).
Check it out:
Hydrogen out, compressed biogas in
http://biopact.com/2006/10/hydrogen-out-compressed-biogas-in_01.html
Posted by: Lorenzo | Oct 11, 2006 12:57:07 PM
To answer pizmo's question, the carbon is in all the energy and materials used to design, manufacture, assemble, truck/ship, and set up the windmill in the first place
Which is how much exactly, assuming all the energy inputs themselves are carbon-neutral?
several times more expensive than the cheapest forms of electricity
Not according to the data I've seen. You also factoring in the costs of "externalities" like acid rain and mercury in the food chain, as well as global warming?
It's also several times more expensive than hydrogen reforming from natural gas, which is why no one creates hydrogen that way.
So since the technology is at this point now, we shouldn't work on improving it? How come people don't apply that same standard to batteries? Technology evolves. Costs go down.
If you want to play that game, then GM's vehicles are all 85% renewable because you COULD make them run on ethanol.
I'm not playing any game. I just find it odd how people think there's some sort of carbon content in hydrogen production from renewable sources. Maybe if there's some sort of non-neutral carbon content in the turbine itself (which is minimal compared to the energy output over its lifetime and especially compared to competing fuels like coal).
Sure, hydrogen COULD be made from renewable sources, but it isn't.
Sure, batteries could last forever and have fast recharge times and be low cost. But they're not.
Ever.
No one has ever made hydrogen from electricity that comes from wind, solar, hydro, geotherm, or wave? Nor will they ever? I don't think so.
Posted by: pizmo | Oct 11, 2006 1:30:47 PM
Every day something new comes up. A couple of weeks ago
There was a article about algae producing Hydrogen, no C
When algae is deprived of o2 and sulfur it produces hydrogen this can be turned on and off . and there are other byproducts also Bio fuel the ablity to take c02 out
Posted by: kevin | Oct 11, 2006 7:29:00 PM
Lorenzo et al,
H2 can be produced from coal gasification or hydrocarbon reformation for under $1/kg if used on-site. The energy required to heat to high temp for the gasification process can be recycled to produce electricity via steam turbine. Ditto for H2 from waste biomass via gasification. If you factor in this type of heat recycling, then H2 production can be very efficient, even more so than electricity production from coal in a standard coal-fired electricity plant. Now, tell me, Lorenzo, why would biogas be any more efficient than H2 when both are produced from the thermal decomposition of biomass? GAsification is a proven H2 mass-production process using all types of biomass as feedstocks with highest efficiency.
To overcome the lost of efficiency of transporting H2 over long distance or of storage of H2, H2 can be produced locally from various feedstocks as the needs arise. Now, looking at the Honda FCX at 60% efficiency, or at the potential for 45% efficiency for H2-ICE-HEV, vs. ~20% efficiency for gasoline cars, which is more efficient? Even if H2 is made from coal or crude oil, it still can be more efficiently used than gasoline from crude oil or BTL or CTL.
Technologies now exist to produce and to utilize H2 from solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy just as efficient or even more efficient than renewable electrical energy for transportation, calculating from Source-to-Wheel overall efficiency.
Since H2 is so bulky to store in a car, it forces car manufacturers to strive for ever-increasing efficiency just to pack enough range. With gasoline car having such an energy-dense fuel, less attention was paid for maximizing fuel efficiency. This is why we now have monstrous personal vehicles with EPG rating of 15-18 mpg's, and they are all over the streets, spewing pollution from their exhaust pipes.
Every day, I have to commute thru heavy traffics, and often exposed to unpleasant if not noxious fumes from petroleum-burning vehicles. Sometimes, it gives me a headaches. Those pickup trucks, SUV and vans are not built to the highest standard of emission requirement, being considered trucks, so that has worsen the local air quality... "Wishin' they could all be Hydrogen...Cars..." (Beach Boys' tune in the background)
Sure hope it will happen within my lifetime (3 or 4 decades more to go)! (Hydrocarbon-free transportation!) Too bad, as highly intelligent and as well-informed as the people in this forum are, and still, most of them are not seeing the clear-cut advantages of hydrogen, so, it probably ain't gonna happen, and that's just too bad.
Posted by: Roger Pham | Oct 12, 2006 12:04:44 AM
I think I've finally worked out the sense in all this hydrogen nonsense....
You just have to replace the word "hydrogen" with "environmental PR" and it all becomes clear!
eg:
GM: "We have spent one billion on environmental PR".
Bush: "This administration will spend millions on environmental PR, developing a future US economy based around environmental PR".
Nobody ever cared about the economics or the energy balance of the thing....
Posted by: clett | Oct 12, 2006 2:41:10 AM
Rafael:
(sorry to be annoying, but according to one popular Hollywood movie You are “finally the man worse to be killed”)
Anyway, I believe that your view of our politicians is overly optimistic. They support obviously lousy concepts (like immediate hydrogen economy) for two reasons:
1. To capitalize on votes of marginal extremists.
2. To find excuse for newer taxes.
And it seems to me way more serious problem that their inherent scientific illiteracy…
Posted by: Andrey | Oct 12, 2006 3:32:12 AM
Roger Pham wrote: Now, tell me, Lorenzo, why would biogas be any more efficient than H2 when both are produced from the thermal decomposition of biomass?
Biogas is made from the anaerobic digestion/fermentation of biomass, not from thermal decomposition. In biogas, bacteria do the work, not some external energy source.
But you can use biogas (anaerobically digested biomass) as a feedstock for H2 production. Only it makes no sense because you can better use the biogas directly in a CBG-hybrid, instead of making the detour via hydrogen.
Have you had a look at the WTW efficiency and emissions data in the EU report? It clearly shows which paths for H2 are efficient and which ones are not. Only a very limited number of paths are better than gasoline on both accounts, and those that are (compressed H2 from wood gasification, used in a fuel cell; and compressed H2 from wind, via the electrolysis of water, used in a fuel cell), have alternative paths that are many times less costly. The only path that stands a bit of a chance is compressed H2 from the gasification of biomass, but only provided the cost of fuel cells and distribution infrastructure comes down radically. (Distribution infrastructure for biomass too, because for gasification plants you need big plants with scale advantages; that means you need to bring in enough biomass to a plant; bulky as biomass is, this is quite costly).
So if you look at the entire picture for possible H2 paths, either the WTW path is too inefficient, or will kill the planet with its CO2 emissions or there are alternatives for the use of the primary energy that make more sense (in the case of biomass-gasification), or the path is way too expensive.
The report identifies biogas (which is the least CO2 intensive of over 70 fuels, and often even CO2 negative) used in a dedicated hybrid-biogas car, to be the most efficient, cleanest, and relatively affordable. Not me saying this.
It's possible you're right about potential efficiency increases in the future, for H2 WTT paths that were not taken into account in that recent report. But such efficiency increases are probably to be expected for non-H2 paths too.
Posted by: Lorenzo | Oct 12, 2006 3:48:31 AM
the only thing thats important is that hydrogenics has a supply agreement with both linde age and BOC...lind AG bought BOC...buy hydrogenics today and by mid 07 buy urself a new hydrogen powered car
Posted by: ben | Oct 12, 2006 6:54:52 AM
Lorenzo:
Thank you for your last post, it was very well articulated and reasoned. Helpful for many I'm sure.
Pizmo, you are also right that there can be a "carbon neutral" path to hydrogen via wind turbine, etc, but as Lorenzo highlighted very clearly above, it just doesn't make as much sense, that is all I was trying to say earlier anyways.
Nice thread here guys, with no name calling going on even! :)
Posted by: John W. | Oct 12, 2006 9:41:43 AM
Yeah, Lorenzo, thanks for that link to the WTW and WTT study from the EU. We need more of those kinds of things to compare the pluses and minuses of the different option paths. It's certainly better than the old "my solution is better than your solution and in fact solves everything by itself" back-and-forth that there's far too much of here.
There's no silver bullet.
Posted by: pizmo | Oct 12, 2006 11:08:03 AM
As a former hydrogen fan, I note the irony of people who dream that popular hydrogen motoring will come in a few decades, seemingly unaware that hydrogen cars existed decades ago. Look up the Hydrogen Car Timeline.
No-one ever buys one; not even if, like the governor of California, they are very rich and have undertaken to do so. Much of the current enthusiasm seems to be from people supported by gasoline taxes, which is to say, from people for whom hydrogen cars' supposedly expected success would be bad financial news.
Posted by: G. R. L. Cowan, boron combustion fan | Oct 12, 2006 11:37:34 AM
Why do they spend millions on h2...? Might as well ask why they spend millionson basicaly a slightly different twinkie or ho ho or soda or or or or.
Because this is a world of over 6billion people and the day we agree on anything is the day after our robot overlords freeze us in carbonite and put us up as decorations.
Posted by: wintermane | Oct 12, 2006 1:03:44 PM
Lorenzo et al,
I've looked at the WTW efficiency report, and can't make much out of it because the prints are so small and so unclear that I can't tell which from which. That website is for do-it-yourselfers who wanted to make biofuel in their backyard, and as such, biogas was championed. Have you looked at the article about "wood gas" in GCC here many weeks ago,which featured a WWII-era car that carried a gasifer in the back, and you put wood or charcoal into the gasifier which heats it up and produce combustible gas to run the car's engine? The gas is of course syngas, a mixture of H2 and CO. What does that tells you? That it is just as easy or even easier to produce H2 by gasification of biomass as biogas fermentation in your backyard. An intra-city gasification-electricity co-generation plant can produce H2 from various carbon-based feedstocks, depending on which would be most available, and generate electricity via steam turbine from the waste heat of the gasification process. Is it hard to transport biomass to a gasification plant? The answer is NO. There was also a recent article on GCC which discussed the feasibility of importing waste biomass from other parts of the world and transport it into Europe to be gasified into fuel products. The ash and other residue from the gasification process represents minerals that can be reprocessed and sold as part of fertilizer and other industrial raw materials.
Of course, biogas (methane) is also highly valuable as a transportation fuel, because an ICE can be designed to run on both methane and H2, and H2 in a mixture of ~ 20% volume with methane (NaturalHy)will enhance the ignition of methane which is much less ignitable than gasoline or hydrogen, thereby rendering higher efficiency. H2 injection can also enhance the efficiency of diesel engines also. Methane has 3x the volumetric energy density of H2, so a H2-car can go 3x further on methane in the same tank at the same pressure.
But, if you have a surplus of electricity and a source of waste heat and you wanna make H2 or methane via Solid Oxide High Temp electrolysis, then, guess what? H2 is the most efficient to make, whereas, if you wanna make methane out of the same process, you will need to add CO2, beside H2O, into the electrolyzer and you will pay a 30% energy efficiency penalty for making methane. So, it pays to modify existing ICE-HEV to be able to run on both H2 and methane gaseous fuels for that reason.
There is nothing wrong with BEV and PHEV, either, if the recent promises in advance battery technologies will deliver. In fact the surplus energy from wind and solar energy can be most efficiently used to charge BEV's and PHEV's. But, one must not dismiss H2 as an equally-efficient and viable transportation fuel that can be implemented TODAY using existing technologies. H2-ICE-HEV will lead the way with 45% efficiency, to be followed by H2-FCV's at 60% efficiency. At that efficiency level, no matter where the H2 is derived from, it will beat gasoline cars at or below 20% efficiency.
The bulkiness of transporting compressed H2 is has an unintended advantage of forcing car mfg's to strive hard for as much fuel efficiency as possible in order to have sufficient range to please the customer. This is better than any current or future CAFE regulation, or gasoline tax, etc...etc... Just look at the GM Sequel, a H2-powered SUV capable of the equivalence of 50 mpg. Now, how many current GM's gasoline powered SUV's, or even diesel powered SUV can come anywhere close to this mpg figure? NONE!!!
Folks, the Feds ain't gonna do diddly squat about raising CAFE to any meaningful level, nor will any politicians risk their electability to do anything about raising the gasoline tax. But, if Calif. CARB will stick to their gun (and other states will follow suit) about requiring increasing percentage of cars produced to be ZEV (Zero Emission Vehicles-meaning no hydrocarbon-cars), ZEV's can be either electric cars or H2-ICE-HEV or H2-FCV's, we will see car efficiency rising through the roof, courtesy of the bulkiness of H2, Ha ha ha!!! H2-cars and BEV's and PHEV's can co-exist, folks. No need to be hostile toward H2-vehicles.
Posted by: Roger Pham | Oct 13, 2006 10:25:19 PM
G.R.L. Cowan, former H2 fan,
Perhaps I can help you regain your faith...Uh...in H2, that is! The reason that Hydrogen car did not succeed before was that the technologies for FCV's was in their embryonic stages before, until just now. Likewise, high-efficiency HEV's like the Prius did not exist before. So, since H2 is so bulky to carry around, range isn't good and no one has bought it, for obvious reason, until car efficiency can be elevated to the level possible with recent technologies.
But, if CARB is successful in mandating increasing percentage of cars to be ZEV's, and other metropolitan areas will follow suit, with laws requiring every gas station in metropolitan areas capable of delivering H2...AND...if H2 will be sold per kg for less than gasoline per gallon...AND if the people realize that their car can travel two to three times farther for the same money spent on fuel...then...Watchout! A H2-capable car may be available at your local car dealers someday within our lifetime!!!
Posted by: Roger Pham | Oct 13, 2006 10:53:12 PM
Roger Pham says, "if H2 will be sold per kg for less than gasoline per gallon...AND if the people realize that their car can travel two to three times farther for the same money spent on fuel...then...Watchout!"
Watch out, indeed! But if you look at hydrogen FCEVs that have fallen into journalists' hands, they seem to have high hopes of 20 percent efficiency, tank to DC terminals. Hydrogen burners were better 30 years ago.
Posted by: G. R. L. Cowan, boron combustion fan | Oct 14, 2006 3:11:54 PM
Er ... let's try that again. High hopes.
Posted by: G. R. L. Cowan, boron combustion fan | Oct 14, 2006 3:20:20 PM
I was happy to find it!
http://buygenericviagr.forumlivre.com/
biagra [url=http://buygenericviagr.forumlivre.com/]biagra[/url]
Posted by: biagra | Jul 22, 2007 1:10:16 AM
