Hydrogen Fuel Station Blast Temporarily Halts Fuel Cell Vehicle Sales in Norway

by Steph Willems

Published: June 12th, 2019

hydrogen fuel station blast temporarily halts fuel cell vehicle sales in norway

Toyota and Hyundai have reportedly suspended sales of the hydrogen fuel cell-powered Mirai and Nexo in Norway after one refueling station went up like the Hindenburg.

Local media reports that, on Monday evening, a Uno-X station in Sandvika suffered a “huge explosion” that injured two nearby drivers after the shock wave caused their vehicles’ airbags to deploy. It’s a black eye for a fuel that, despite the best efforts of a handful of determined automakers, can’t seem to make much headway in the marketplace.

Following the blast, station operator Nel shut down a number of its remaining refueling locations in Norway, reports NRK, as well as those in other European countries. An investigation is ongoing.

The lack of hydrogen availability in Norway means there’s little reason to sell vehicles that can’t find fuel. In response, Toyota and Hyundai have temporarily suspended sales of their FCVs.

Hydrogen is difficult and energy-intensive to produce; in California, the only U.S. state to offer drivers the option of taking home a FCV, efforts are underway to expand the existing network of 40 retail refueling stations. Another 24 are in various stages of planning and approval.

FCVs operate by generating electricity through a chemical reaction in the fuel cell stack. That current then powers a conventional electric motor, which powers the drive wheels of the car. Operation is much like any other EV, though refueling is a much quicker process than plugging in your vehicle overnight. Of course, that’s assuming the nearby station hasn’t run dry of its supply of scarce liquified hydrogen. Range, while improved from early models, still lags behind that of internal combustion vehicles.

News of a station detonating will no doubt rekindle distrust in the highly flammable gas, which, as this story’s lede aptly shows, can’t seem to shake the stigma of that 1937 tragedy at Lakehurst Naval Air Station. And still automakers try. Among other makes, Hyundai, Toyota, Honda, and Mercedes-Benz feel that the future of propulsion is not yet set in stone; thus, FCV development continues.

[Image: Toyota, Matthew Guy/TTAC]

#Emissions #FCV #FuelCellVehicles #Green #Hydrogen #HydrogenRefuelingStations #Norway #Safety

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Volvo on Jun 12, 2019

I have a question. The post says "Hydrogen is difficult and energy-intensive to produce'. Can anyone give more details on that? Is the energy cycle from source (presumably gas from oil wells) to that delivered to the wheels of the vehicle positive or negative? How does it compare to gasoline or diesel? Hydrogen is very volatile with vapor point of -423F. Very low ignition energy input. And flammable over range of 4%-75% oxygen. I guess the good point is that spontaneous combustion temp of pure hydrogen is +1060 F Because of handling/storage difficulties and relative low energy density/volume at reasonable pressures it has been used in the past for applications that require vast amounts of instantaneous power, such as rocketry and spaceflight. IMO hydrogen as a fuel for cars/trucks/buses is not ready for prime time.

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- Jagboi on Jun 12, 2019
  
  I used to work at a fuel cell R&D company, so am quite familiar with their challenges and advantages. One way to produce hydrogen is electrolysis of water. Basically, apply power to water and it breaks down to hydrogen and oxygen. However, the H2-O2 bonds are strong, so it take more energy to break the bonds one made, than is obtainable from the energy that is released by making the bonds. There is a net energy deficit in electrolysis of water. If the power is generated by nuclear to hydro, it might not matter through, but if it's a coal of gas fired power station it does matter. As a very crude analogy, this of the snap together plastic car models you might have built as a kid. It's much easier to snap the pieces together than to take them apart after assembly isn't? The other way to produce commercial quantities of hydrogen, and the way most is produced, is by steam reforming of natural gas. You heat methane and steam in the presence of either a platinum or palladium catalyst at temperatures of 750 C ( i.e glowing bright red for steel) and you get H2 and CO. Most automotive type fuel cells are PEM ( proton exchange membrane)cells that run at about 70C. To them CO is a poison, so that needs to be stripped out of the reformate gas. Basically, you throw away half the fuel before you even start. The other type of cell is SOFC - solid oxide fuel cell. These run at about 700C, so could use the hot gas straight from the reformation process. They can use teh H2-CO mix as fuel, but the problem with them is the ceramic membrane is a Ytteria stabilized zirconia, mixed with platinum and palladium and it is very brittle. It has to be brought up to temperature slowly, it takes about 4-6 hours to come up to temperature so the cells don't crack and then it's ready to start producing electricity. Once hot it has to be fed fuel continuously, as any air touching the reduction side of the membrane will destroy it instantly. if you've done much chemistry, you know there are basically two types of reaction: reduction and oxidation. Materials can generally resist one type of process, but not the other. Both of these occurs at the same time in an SOFC cell, and at very elevated temperatures when steel has the strength of soft lead for example. Last I heard there were only 6 materials known that could act as seals and withstand the temperature and reduction and oxidation at the same time. As you can imagine these are not cheap or easy to work with. The other problem with hydrogen is it is the smallest molecule. It sees steel as window screen and goes right through it. Hydrogen burns with an invisible flame, you can walk right into a hydrogen fire and not know until it's too late. The SOFC cells also operate above the autoignition temperature of hydrogen, so if there is a leaky seal in the fuel cell stack and the H2 leaks out, you have an instant fire. We had a seal split one weekend when a stack was on test and came in Monday to a melted puddle of inconel and stainless steel on the floor, what was all that remained of the test stand that contained the fuel cell stack on Friday. The control system shut off the hydrogen before the building burned down, but it was a hot fire. The stacks themselves can be in the 50% efficient range, but when the amount of energy required to make the hydrogen is included as a complete energy cycle analysis, the efficiency was far less than using conventional gasoline or diesel for transportation.
  
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- Conundrum on Jun 12, 2019
  
  @Jagboi Thanks for that. A very good yet concise explanation from someone who knows a bit about the subject. If hydrogen is most often made by decarbonizing natural gas at some significant cost in energy input, you have to bang your head against the wall and wonder - why bother? Of course you need hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles, but why not just run natural gas in an average ICE engine and avoid wasting energy producing hydrogen? I guess what I'm asking, what the hell is the use of fuel cells for vehicle propulsion in the first place? It hasn't been obvious to me for well over 40 years now. All I see is waste, waste and more waste, and then there's the problem of hydrogen leaking out from everything but incredibly expensive specialty tankage. Complete waste of resources from beginning to end, it seems at first and second blush. However, I'm willing to listen to a solid technical argument in its favour if there are any. What do you believe?
  
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- Jagboi on Jun 13, 2019
  
  @conundrum I used to work with the guy who invented the fuel cell powered bus that BC Transit used in North Vancouver. They had a unique situation in that there was a chemical company across from the bus barns who manufactured soap. A byproduct of the soap process is hydrogen and they used to flare it off. They reached an agreement with BC Transit and put a pipeline across the street to the bus barns and used the hydrogen to fuel the buses. It did work fairly well, as the busses were electric drive they had plenty of power to get away from the curb quickly and were well suited to the stop and go of an urban bus route. Range was always a problem, as well as life of the fuel cells. Of course, we had the same thing 60 years ago in the form of trolly busses with overhead wires, and earlier with streetcars. Fuel cells are really best suited to applications that have constant load. One application we were looking at was cathodic protection of pipelines. They are often remote, need little but steady power, and have natural gas as the only fuel available. That became obsolete with better solar panels and batteries. I can see fuel cells in some industrial uses, such as providing a base load to the grid, assuming there is a source of hydrogen that could be utilized like in Vancouver, but I think it's poorly suited to retail users in a transportation application.
  
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Volvo on Jun 12, 2019

I also am grateful for that excellent technical description from someone who was in the industry. As to your question. I do not have a technical argument for hydrogen fuel cells. I do have a political argument and that is that this is just another large corporate try at government subsidized rent seeking.

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