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Over the next 20 years, U.S. daily consumption
of oil will grow by more than 6 million barrels.
So says an Energy Report, signed by Dick Cheney,
posted on the White House website (www.whitehouse.gov/energy).
In the words of Edward VIII, when touring the
heavily polluted and poverty-stricken mining valleys
of South Wales just before his unhappy departure
from the throne, “Something needs to be done!”
It is always intriguing to find that BC gives
Canada a leadership role in alternative fuel technologies
despite there being 79 countries on the planet
where gasoline is sold at a higher price (www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/ene_
gas_pri&int=-1). Perhaps we do so well simply
because of the lower fuel prices in the United
States or maybe the lack of a serious winter in
British Columbia allows us to helpfully worry
about the rest of Canada and most of the U.S.
freezing.
In BC we are now developing the Hydrogen Highway™.
It will guide vehicles from the longest undefended
border in the world through Vancouver to Whistler,
BC, before the 2010 Winter Olympics. According
to Ron Britton (rbritton@fuelcellscanada.ca),
the CEO of Fuel Cells Canada, the trademarked
name is in the process of being assigned to FCC
who will provide the organizational infrastructure.
It was originally thoughtfully registered by Methanex
(www.methanex.com), BC Hydro (www. bchydro.com),
and the National Research Council of Canada (www.nrc.ca).
In Norway, there is a claim to be developing such
a highway (www.h2cars.biz/artman/publish/article_343.shtml),
but BC’s Hydrogen Highway™ is the one
with the trademark. There is cross-border discussion
that the term will be offered to the highway reaching
north from California. This ™ is intended
to encourage sharing, not exclusion.
Ron Britton recently briefed me on the concept
when he described seven nodes, i.e., fueling sites
in British Columbia. These nodes will not only
make it possible for hydrogen-powered vehicles
to drive from the Washington State border to Whistler,
but will also provide hydrogen and probably hydrogen
natural gas blends that can be delivered to vehicles,
stationary power generators and small utilities.
The Hydrogen Highway™ Program, which is still
in an early stage, is designed to ensure that
a number of practical approaches to hydrogen fueling
are taken beyond the prototype stage into field
use. There will be “nodes” where the
hydrogen is made from a number of different sources,
including natural gas, electricity, methanol or
bio-methanol. Mark Grist of Methanex (mgrist@methanex.com)
says that the Whistler station may produce hydrogen
from methanol since its reformation is relatively
simple and, as yet, there is no natural gas in
Whistler.
One fueling station on the Hydrogen Highway™
is already operational. The world’s first
700bar (10,000psig) station is at the Powertech
Laboratory (www.power tech.bc.ca) of BC Hydro
in Surrey. Renowned for its engineering work on
the development of both natural gas and hydrogen
cylinders, Powertech is working with Toyota, Nissan,
Ford, DaimlerChrysler, Hyundai and PSA Peugeot
to develop the world’s first on-board 700bar
(10,000psig) gaseous hydrogen storage and fueling
system for vehicles. Canadian suppliers, such
as IMW Compressors (www.imw.bc.ca) and cylinder
supplier Dynetek (www.dynetek.com), are participating
in the program.
In natural gas vehicle parlance, the Powertech
station is a “mother” facility. Hydrogen
produced there by electrolysis can be compressed
and transported elsewhere for use without a compressor.
The station has been used already to directly
fuel a Ford Fuel Cell Focus and is also used routinely
to provide a blend of hydrogen and natural gas
for engine-equipped trucks.
In effect, according to David Shepherd (dshepherd@fuelcellscanada.ca)
of Fuel Cells Canada there is already a “daughter”
facility with refueling capability at the National
Research Council of Canada facility on the UBC
campus. There is also electrolysis on site as
well as a new fluidized bed technology from MRT
(www.mem branereactor.com) to convert natural
gas efficiently to hydrogen. Simply adding a compressor
and dispenser would make the site a full-fledged
“mother” station.
A “node” is planned in Victoria to support
projects at the University of Victoria and also
hydrogen vehicles that, necessarily, have to visit
the Province’s capital, which is still remotely
located, just as it was before a railway crossed
the continent. Geoff Wood of Profile Composites
(GMWood@aol.com) tells me that he would like to
link a lightweight hydrogen hybrid project to
this fueling source.
Another exciting, and more central, “node”
is planned in North Vancouver that could use byproduct
hydrogen from an electrochemical plant that would
otherwise be vented into the atmosphere; indeed
a fraction of byproduct hydrogen that does not
react with oxygen continues off into space and
is lost from the planet altogether. Chris Sacré
of Sacré-Davey (csacre@sacre-davey.com)
described the plan.
In North Vancouver 5,000 tons per year of hydrogen
are presently lost. Many other plants that vent
hydrogen dot not only Canada but also the entire
planet, and applications and demand for some of
their products are climbing. For example, sodium
chlorate is used more and more for water purification.
If we don’t use it, we lose it. The route
provides a good full cycle source of hydrogen.
You can also find that hydrogen is being recovered
already at a chlorate plant in Quebec in a project
sponsored by Natural Resources Canada
http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca
Fifty one million tons of chlorine and 2.8 million
tons of sodium chlorate were produced around the
world in 2002. The combined hydrogen byproduct
from just these two products works out to be 1,607,000
annual tons of hydrogen, which is equivalent to
32.7 million barrels of oil per year or up to
44.4 million barrels of oil with the advantage
that a fuel cell hybrid has over a diesel hybrid.
This hydrogen exists now and simply needs to be,
yes, mined, a word we do not normally associate
with hydrogen!
The quantity of byproduct hydrogen mentioned above
is small in the vast ocean of needs defined by
Dick Cheney’s team, but it would provide
an excellent resource for centrally refueled fleets
in locations where these chemical plants exist
– or will exist. The demand for sodium chlorate
is growing at the rate of 6% per year, and it
is readily shipped to market. The raw material
for this product is brine, or seawater
With the Hydrogen Highway™ in mind, BC visionaries
like Ron Britton and Chris Sacré will tap
into an existing plant in BC that exudes hydrogen.
In the first half of the 20th century like-minded
people were locating aluminum plants in remote
locations. Is there a connection?
Perhaps there is. As the 21st century begins,
all around the world, aluminum plants are being
replaced with modern, more efficient technology
that employs fewer people. Suddenly we have remote
locations where excess electricity coexists with
homes, schools and people with cars. In some cases,
a city is too far from the rest of the world to
be accessible by anything but a plane. Cars, trucks
and buses here may not need to travel long distances.
One wonders whether these homes, schools and vehicles
could provide the seeds for a hydrogen economy.
The electricity-using sodium chlorate industry
is growing and more hydrogen is being released.
Of course, we could simply ship in the hydrogen,
but what if we shipped out sodium chlorate and
used the hydrogen locally? Could any electrically
endowed coastal city become the center of a hydrogen
industry? BC has several candidate coastal sites;
indeed, Nanaimo already has waste hydrogen from
a chlorate plant.
Such a move would, of course, provide centers
of development and distributed power generation
that will need software to manage it such as that
developed by Bill Havens at Actenum Corp. (www.actenum.com).
It would develop jobs and skills in communities
that are presently puzzling what other business
can be developed.
All agree that the key to success will be to keep
the nodes, or fuel stations, of the Hydrogen Highway™
busy. There is a flurry of activity to identify
a range of projects that will use hydrogen, both
pure and blended with natural gas. In Surrey there
are already Hythane trucks. Westport Innovations
(www.westport.com) will be proposing further Hythane
buses; there is also talk of hydrogen at hybrid
vehicle developer Azure Dynamics (www.azure dynamics.com).
Others are talking of stationary fuel cells, PEMFC,
DMFC and SOFC, for which proposals are expected
relating to power and heat for the athletes’
villages for 2010, remote power needs, and small
vehicles.
At the Whistler node especially, where the planned
source of the hydrogen may be methanol, it is
expected we can anticipate that there will be
projects using DMFC technology in which we saw
Methanex involved at EVS20.
Above all, knowledge will be communicated up and
down the Hydrogen Highway™ from California
to Whistler. This will avoid the experience suffered
by the driver of a natural gas car from BC that
I met at EVS12 in December 1994. The vehicle was
driven 1500 miles to the EVS12 meeting in Anaheim
from Vancouver, BC. It made the trip only because
it was a bi-fuel car and could fill up with gasoline.
There was no shortage of natural gas stations
on the route; it was simply that each jurisdiction
required a different mechanical connector to refuel
the vehicle. By communicating and sharing information
we can avoid problems like this and succeed in
our visions. This is what Ron Britton and the
Hydrogen Highway™ Team are planning to do.
As the “highway” is built more than
vehicles may come. The support of work to mine
the hydrogen produced as a byproduct may well
prevent some coastal communities from declining.
Of this 21st century hydrogen mining, Edward VIII
may well have said, “Something is being done!”
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