Hydrogen mobility is at a crossroads. Sales of fuel-cell cars are a pittance, sightings of Toyota’s Mirai and Hyundai’s Nexo as rare as me adhering to speed limits. The much-anticipated growth of hydrogen-powered commercial vehicles — the long-haul 18-wheelers that could use H2’s longer range and quick refuelling to advantage — has stalled, the industry’s leading proponent, Nikola, filing for bankruptcy just this week.
This malaise has many causes, not the least of which is a lack of an Elon Musk Christ-like advocate leading the charge. But the real reason that fuel-cell vehicles — be they passenger or commercial — are in the doldrums is infrastructure and cost. As in, there are no hydrogen stations, and what few there are cost way too much.
In fact, in recent years, the costs increases have been astronomical. In 2019, the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois pegged the price of a kilogram of H2 at US$13 to US$16, expecting, at least at that time, a sizable reduction in retail cost in the future.
According to S&P Global, the opposite has happened. As of October of last year, the average price for a kilogram of hydrogen in California was US$34.55. One company, True Zero, was charging as much as US$36/kg. For reference, according to an article from the World Economic Forum, for hydrogen-powered commercial trucks to be cost-competitive with their diesel-fuelled cohorts, hydrogen would have to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of US$4 to US$5 per kilogram.
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So, how to span such an enormous gulf?
Well, one of the confusions surrounding H2 mobility — certainly one of the things I was confused about — is that the production of hydrogen is actually but a small part of its cost. According to an article penned by Ted McKlveen and Bav Roy, the co-founders of Verne, it’s delivering the lighter-than-air gas to customers that makes up 85% of the retail price of a kilo of hydrogen.
More specifically, because storage of hydrogen is so difficult, the cost of the stations represents a whopping 50% of the pump price for a kilo of H2, and, for the same reasons, delivery accounts for a whopping 35%. The actual production of hydrogen — that which we have been led to believe is so difficult — only accounts for 15% of the cost at the pump. Yes, at the time of the original Argonne study, the cost of producing a kilo of hydrogen was pegged at just two bucks a kilogram.
The reason the shipping and handling costs so much are manifold. For instance, hydrogen liquification traditionally costs US$2.75/kg, a huge number when your target is US$4 to US$5 a kilo. Meanwhile, hydrogen stations require compressors, high-pressure storage units, and other specialized gear that can add another US$8 per kilogram. And we haven’t even discussed shipping.
The good news is McKlveen and Roy say they have a solution, claiming their company, Verne, has developed a system that “can reach comparable hydrogen densities at 65% lower cost.” It’s called cryo-compression and, as the name implies, it involves both cooling and compressing the gas (conventional hydrogen storage systems either compress or cool the gas).
Verne isn’t currently revealing the actual process — but they are joining our latest Driving into the Future panel on March 12 at 11:00 a.m., where they will give us more information — but, in general terms, cryo-compression sees the hydrogen pressurized to as much as 700 bar and cooled to temperatures as low as 25 Kelvin. For a little context here — and because most of us don’t think of pressure in terms of “bar,” or measure temperature in Kelvin — that’s about 10,000 psi and -248 C. Yes, minus 248 degrees Celsius. For a little more context, nitrogen boils at 77 K (-196 C) and 0 K (-273.15 C) is absolute zero, which Merriam-Webster defines as a “complete absence of heat and motion.”
According to Verne, cryo-compressed hydrogen (CcH2) has a number of advantages, the primary of which is vastly increased energy density. Compared with traditional liquid hydrogen, CcH2 enables 33% greater hydrogen storage density. More importantly — because this is the storage system used by most FCEV vehicles, including the Toyota Mirai — compared with gaseous hydrogen compressed to 700 bar, energy density is almost doubled (87% greater).
For a little context vis-à-vis the energy density of modern lithium-ion batteries, Verne says that a 29-kilogram tank of CcH2 can store about the same amount of energy as a one-megawatt-hour battery — typical for commercial 18-wheelers — but the entire system only weighs 400 kilograms (880 pounds) versus the roughly 5,000 kilos (11,000 lbs) that one megawatt-hour of lithium adds to an electric semi’s curb weight.
The cost of “densification” by cryo-compression is also lower, first because it can be compressed less (only to 5,000 psi rather than 10,000 psi) and, more importantly — at least to someone semi-versed in the problems associated with a traditional liquid-hydrogen “gas tank” — CcH2 experiences much less “boil-off.” In fact, a study by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says that “cryogenic vessels” — that’s nerd-speak for ‘the tanks’ — “are very unlikely to have any vent losses during normal operation.”
For all these reasons — greater energy density, reduced densification costs, and less boil-off losses — Verne says its new process “enables 40% cheaper hydrogen distribution costs relative to existing technologies.” Considering that the majority of the reason there are not nearly enough fuel-cell-powered cars on our roads is the lack of infrastructure and the high cost of hydrogen, Verne’s technology could be another one of the game-changers necessary for hydrogen to be a significant player in the automotive powertrains of the future.
If you’d like to learn more on how the transportation industry is going to make hydrogen cost-effective for vehicle use, join for our latest Driving into the Future panel — Hydrogen: The Missing Piece — where you can hear about Verne’s new technology from Pat Donley, Business Operations Manager; as well as Robin Hamilton, Chief Technology Officer for Dark Matter Materials, whose revolutionary thermo-catalytic water-splitting process promises cheap production of hydrogen.
Join us March 12 at 11:00 a.m. for all the answers to a cleaner, greener transportation future powered by hydrogen. Register here for free.
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