Focus on hydrogen production, not applications

Dr Frank Koch, manager of the Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Network North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), says that the focus on applications at the expense of hydrogen production is an international problem that risks undermining the long term sustainability of hydrogen as a fuel.

“People see hydrogen in transport as an answer to clean mobility, but they don’t think about how it is produced. In most cases, it is fossil fuel based hydrogen, produced in steam reformers or electrolysers. That might be acceptable in the short term, but in the longer term we have to develop sustainable ways to produce hydrogen,” says Koch.

Pipeline
The first step, Koch says, is to make better use of existing hydrogen infrastructure, rather than coming up with new ideas. In NRW’s case, this means exploiting the potential of the existing 230km hydrogen pipeline, which runs from the Ruhr down to Leverkusen.

Built in the 1930s, the pipeline connects various chemical and industrial plants, including the giant Bayer facility in Leverkusen. At most of these plants, hydrogen is produced as a by-product. Some of the hydrogen is used in other factories, such as margarine or glass production, but around 1 million cubic feet is burned every year. Koch points to similar pipelines in operation in Antwerp and Rotterdam.

The Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Network NRW is currently developing proposals to make this pipeline hydrogen available for transport, with the aim of having up to five hydrogen fuelling facilities up and running in time for the 2010 World Hydrogen Energy Conference being held in the German city of Essen, in the Ruhr region.

Sewage
Another source of sustainable hydrogen which already exists, says Koch, is sewage works. Virtually every major town or city has a sewage treatment plant. These create large amounts of methane which could be used to produce vast amounts of hydrogen.

“We should focus on using these existing sources of hydrogen as way of overcoming the chicken and egg problem which everyone always talks about. We have the basic infrastructure already in place, now it’s time to start using it,” says Koch.