Hydrogen energy vehicles solve a major technical difficulty, and the United States and California use new technology to 'transport hydrogen' throughout the city

Lithium Grid News: Compared with fossil fuels such as petroleum and coal, hydrogen energy has significant advantages such as zero carbon, high efficiency, safety and controllability, but its application in electric vehicles is not so extensive. One of the main reasons is that hydrogen needs to be kept cool and pressurized during the distribution process, and hydrogen is produced intermittently, which makes truck transportation more difficult. But now, hydrogen blending technology provides a potential solution, that is, directly injecting hydrogen into the existing natural gas network can quickly and effectively transport it to the entire city, while gas stations only need to separate the hydrogen and recharge Just enter the hydrogen tank. In this way, distribution will no longer be a problem, and hydrogen pumps will be spread all over the city.

To test this concept, Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) is building a hydrogen hybrid demonstration project to electrolyze the remaining renewable energy to produce hydrogen, and then mix it into Natural gas is in supply. A separate network segment (mainly using polyethylene pipes) will be selected early next year, and the hydrogen will be mixed at an initial ratio of about 1%, which may rise to 20% during the test. At this ratio, the mixture of hydrogen and natural gas when burned is almost exactly the same as ordinary compressed natural gas, which can drive stoves, boilers, services and other similar equipment. The main difference is that carbon dioxide emissions at the combustion site will be reduced. Only when the mixed gas concentration reaches 30-40%, does it really need to be treated completely different from ordinary natural gas pipelines. This is not the first such experiment on a global scale, but it will be one of the first in the United States.

On the other hand, SoCalGas also announced that it will cooperate with the Dutch company HyET Hydrogen to use HyET’s electrochemical hydrogen purification and compression (EHPC) technology to separate hydrogen from the gas pipeline and enter the compression storage tank . The EHPC system uses an electrically driven hydrogen selective membrane that can suck small hydrogen molecules through without allowing methane and other natural gas molecules to pass through.

It is understood that the initial deployment of the project is expected to extract and compress about 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of hydrogen per day, but within two years, this number will increase 10 times. Since 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of compressed hydrogen is enough to fill about 20 fuel cell vehicles, this is not far from providing a commercially viable solution for gas stations. If gas stations can easily connect themselves to a reliable source of hydrogen, the lack of hydrogen refueling facilities will soon cease to be an obstacle to fuel cell vehicles. The same infrastructure can also provide fuel for large truck transport stations or hydrogen-fueled airplanes stopping at hydrogen-fueled airports.