Challenges and Barriers

Hydrogen energy is one of the multiple paths in searching for alternative solution to current energy situation regarding cleanness to the environment and energy security.

Other paths are competing forces to hydrogen energy, including biofuels, plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, compressed natural gas, and synfuel…etc. All of these forces can be a threat to hydrogen energy as they provide some benefits hydrogen energy cannot achieve. However, they also have disadvantages giving hydrogen energy some chances. Overall, hydrogen energy should mitigate its own disadvantages to be competitive in the alternative energy market.

5.2.1 Hydrogen Infrastructures

As described in chapter 2, hydrogen can be produced by wide range of sources

from fossil fuel to renewable resources and some of the production methods are still under development. Natural gas, coal and fossil fuel are the cheapest way of producing hydrogen but pose some problems. During the production process, carbon dioxide will be released contradicting to the cleanness of using hydrogen. Although there are processes of capturing the carbon dioxide and store them underground, there are technologies enable vehicle to use natural gas directly. Therefore, hydrogen through natural gas production seems redundant. Natural gas only serve the purpose of helping society transition in hydrogen by supplying lower price hydrogen, long term sustainable production still depends renewable resources.

Using renewable resources such as solar or wind energy to produce hydrogen is the goal of hydrogen economy due to environmental benefits, energy security, and sustainable production by using energy current account. However, compare to traditional production methods, the cost becomes high and reduced the incentive for people to choice hydrogen fuel over petroleum. Moreover, current available method of renewable hydrogen production is water electrolysis; this method has acceptable efficiency in energy conversion rate, but lower efficiency rate compare to direct electricity usage from the same renewable production. This is one of the arguments commonly used in pure electrical battery vehicle when compared to fuel cell vehicle.

If hydrogen conversion efficiency is higher, then we can save more infrastructure cost such as lower amount of solar panel or wind turbine. Other renewable hydrogen production methods are mostly in research stage, further studies for marketable hydrogen production need to be demonstrated.

Vehicle onboard hydrogen storage technology is commercially available as pressurized gaseous hydrogen tank storage and being the current major choice for automobile companies’ fuel cell vehicle. However, this method is costly around

$600/kg H2 and requires extra energy to keep the pressure, which poses difficulty for

introducing economical fuel cell vehicle. Other on board hydrogen storage methods are in development phase with possibility of better benefits such as metal hydride.

Selection and standardize the onboard storage method is important as it affects how hydrogen infrastructures are being built (The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs, 2004).

To build massive centralized hydrogen production units, massive hydrogen storage technology and distribution technology needs to be mature. However, currently massive hydrogen storage technology is not available except storing them underground by using depleted natural gas mine. Hydrogen distributions using vehicle or pipeline have many problems need to be solved. Hydrogen pipeline existed in Europe and America, but the distances are shorter than natural gas pipelines. To build a hydrogen pipeline distribution infrastructure needs lots of investment due to the hydrogen property and materials required. Also, the gaseous hydrogen needs to be re-pressured when travel through certain distances, adding more cost toward the system. Overall, hydrogen infrastructure faces problem mainly in technical difficulties and cost of building such infrastructure (Dixon, Robert K, 2007).

A quick way to solve the costly and almost non existence storing and distribution hydrogen infrastructure is through decentralized infrastructure, which combines hydrogen production, storage and delivery all in one location and provide hydrogen for vehicles when they arrive to refuel. This onsite refueling station produces hydrogen mostly through natural gas steam reforming and electrolysis. As mentioned, although with smaller amounts, steam reforming produced green house gas carbon dioxide; cost of controlling carbon dioxide emission is even higher than centralized infrastructure. Overall, the cost of decentralized units of hydrogen production is more than 50/GJ H2, while centralized production can achieve 10-20/GJ H2 in the future.

So decentralized hydrogen production becomes expansive in the long run. Moreover,

centralized infrastructures have more production method choice than decentralized units. In the long run, centralized infrastructure showed more economical, while decentralized units serve a quick hydrogen supply introduction in energy transition phase especially in fuel cell vehicles.

5.2.2 Fuel Cell Technologies

Fuel cell technology with wide range of applications can operate efficiently and environmentally using hydrogen as fuel. Fuel cell can possibly play an important role in future hydrogen economy. Despite these benefits, if fuel cell cannot reach economical prices, customers would not have incentive to purchase this technology.

As price becomes a barrier to fuel cell introduction, cost reduction is a primary goal for fuel cell improvement. Stationary fuel cell has to reach $ 1,500 per kilowatt or below to be competitive. Fuel cell for vehicle usages needs to reach $50 to $100 per kilowatt in order to compete with hybrid vehicles.

Several areas of fuel cells need further research. Material science is an important area where reduction of material cost and alternative material are important since many types of fuel cell uses precious metals as electrodes that raise the cost of fuel cell. Other areas of research includes increasing the power density of fuel cell, improve the production process and implement mass production in reaching economies of scale, and reduce system complexity. To drive down the cost of fuel cell, these areas needs to be further developed. Besides these needed improvement for cost down purpose, fundamental research in fuel cell will add extra benefits. New types of fuel cell with new materials, increase containment tolerance from carbon monoxide and sulfur, and new improved overall fuel cell system through balance of plant concept. Innovative concepts are needed for further improvement or new fuel cell

concepts for reaching further benefits.

Another fuel cell matter is its reliability of providing power supply. Fuel cell can provide high power quality, however, long term power supply performance and reliability needs to be tested. Some of the areas need to be researched on include the endurance and lifetime of fuel cell, durable in installed environment, and grid connection. If reliability can be justified with the power quality supplied by fuel cell will assist fuel cell into commercial market applications (Rayment, Chris and Sherwin, 2003).