Developing and implementing fuel quality specifications for hydrogen are prerequisites to the widespread deployment of hydrogen-fueled fuel cell vehicles. Several organizations are addressing this fuel quality issue, including the International Standards Organization (ISO), the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), the California Fuel Cell Partnership (CaFCP), and the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO)/Japan Automobile Research Institute (JARI). All of their activities, however, have focused on the deleterious effects of potential contaminants on the automotive fuel cell or on-board hydrogen storage systems. While it is possible for the energy industry to provide extremely pure hydrogen, such hydrogen could entail excessive costs. It is the objective of this task to develop a process whereby the hydrogen quality requirements may be determined based on life-cycle costs of the complete hydrogen fuel cell vehicle "system." To accomplish this objective, the influence of different contaminants and their concentrations in fuel hydrogen on the life-cycle costs of hydrogen production, purification, use in fuel cells, and hydrogen analysis and quality verification are being assessed.

Approach: Hydrogen Quality Working Group

We have assembled a DOE Hydrogen Quality Working Group (H2QWG) to obtain input from a broad spectrum of involved groups and organizations. Members of the H2QWG include DOE Hydrogen Program's Technology Development Managers; U.S. automobile companies and fuel cell developers (DaimlerChrysler, Ford, General Motors, UTC Power); energy companies (BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell); and DOE National Laboratories (Argonne, Los Alamos, National Renewable Energy Laboratory). Argonne is helping to coordinate the activities of the H2QWG.

To develop the process for assessing the effects of hydrogen quality specifications on costs and energy usage of the fuel cell vehicle over its life cycle, the H2QWG has:

Developed a draft roadmap to help define the work of the group;
Held in-person meetings three to four times a year to obtain input from fuel cell developers, hydrogen suppliers, analytical chemists for gas analysis technologies, and developers of the DOE-sponsored H2A hydrogen production and delivery model for costing methodologies;
Initiated a database of critically assessed relevant literature;
Worked with model developers at Argonne and other organizations to help develop and validate performance and life-cycle cost models; and
Provided briefings and updates to various FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership’s Technical Teams and other groups involved in related work.

Approach: Correlating Hydrogen Quality with the Cost of Hydrogen

Hydrogen is currently produced in large quantities at central facilities such as refineries and chemical plants, which are also consumers of hydrogen. The demand of smaller consumers is generally met by transporting the hydrogen from these central production plants. It is anticipated that the refueling needs of hydrogen-fueled vehicles will be met by installing distributed hydrogen production facilities at (existing or similar) gasoline refueling stations. While the long-term hydrogen pathway will be based on renewable energy, the most likely near-term pathway is expected to be from a process based on a natural gas steam reformer followed by a pressure swing adsorption system. Argonne has developed a model of this process, using a detailed PSA model, that can correlate the efficiency of the combined process with the level of impurities (CO, nitrogen, etc.) in the product hydrogen, for a variety of process assumptions and conditions (e.g., temperature, pressure, steam-to-carbon ratio, type of sorbents, etc.) These results can then be used within DOE's H2A economic analysis tool to correlate the cost of hydrogen with the levels of impurities present in that hydrogen. These cost factors will then be used to calculate the sensitivity of the life-cycle cost of vehicle ownership as a function of the impurity level.

May 2008