Integration of a light mobility urban scale hydrogen refuelling station for cycling purposes in the transportation market

Road transportation consists of a significant contributor to total greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries. New alternative technologies in transportation such as electric vehicles aim to reduce substantially vehicle emissions, particularly in urban areas. Incentives of using two-wheel electric vehicles such as bicycles in big cities centres are promoted by local governments, and in fact, some countries are already trying to adopt this transition. An interesting case consists of the use of hydrogen fuel cells in such vehicles to increase their driving range under short refuelling times. To this end, this paper investigated the social and financial prospects of hydrogen infrastructure for city-oriented fuel cell electric vehicles such as bicycles. The results of the research indicated that a light mobility urban hydrogen refuelling station able to provide refuelling processes at pressures of 30 bar with a hydrogen fuel cost of 34.7 €/kgH₂ is more favourable compared to larger stations.     

Design of a solar hydrogen refuelling station following the development of the first Croatian fuel cell powered bicycle to boost hydrogen urban mobility

Hydrogen refuelling stations are important for achieving sustainable hydrogen economy in low carbon transport and fuel cell electric vehicles. The solution presented in this paper provides us with a technology for producing carbon dioxide free hydrogen, which is an approach that goes beyond the existing large-scale hydrogen production technologies that use fossil fuel reforming. Hence, the main goal of this work was to design a hydrogen refuelling station to secure the autonomy of a hydrogen powered bicycle. The bicycle hydrogen system is equipped with a proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack of 300 W, a DC/DC converter, and a metal hydride storage tank of 350 NL of hydrogen. The hydrogen power system was made of readily available commercial components. The hydrogen station was designed as an off-grid system in which the installed proton exchange membrane electrolyzer is supplied with electric energy by direct conversion using photovoltaic cells. With the hydrogen flow rate of 2000 cc min⁻¹ the hydrogen station is expected to supply at least 5 bicycles to be used in 20 km long city tourist routes.     

Refuelling scenarios of a light urban fuel cell vehicle with metal hydride hydrogen storage. Comparison with compressed hydrogen storage counterpart

The high price of hydrogen fuel in the fuel cell vehicle refuelling market is highly dependent on the one hand from the production costs of hydrogen and on the other from the capital cost of a hydrogen refuelling station's components to support a safe and adequate refuelling process of contemporary fuel cell vehicles. The hydrogen storage technology dominated in the vehicle sector is currently based on high-pressure compressed hydrogen tanks to extend as much as possible the driving range of the vehicles. However, this technology mandates the use of large hydrogen compression and cooling systems as part of the refuelling infrastructure that consequently increase the final cost of the fuel. This study investigated the prospects of lowering the refuelling cost of small urban hydrogen vehicles through the utilisation of metal hydride hydrogen storage. The results showed that for low compression hydrogen storage, metal hydride storage is in favour in terms of the dispensed hydrogen fuel price, while its weight is highly comparable to the one of a compressed hydrogen tank. The final refuelling cost from the consumer's perspective however was found to be higher than the compressed gas due to the increased hydrogen quantity required to be stored in fully empty metal hydride tanks to meet the same demand.     

Supporting green Urban mobility – The case of a small-scale autonomous hydrogen refuelling station

Nowadays, the development of hydrogen economy in the transportation sector is hindered by the principal barriers arising from the lack of adequate infrastructure and the small fleet of hydrogen-based road vehicles.This study investigates the potential of small-scale autonomous hydrogen refuelling stations with onsite production via an alkaline electrolysis apparatus powered by a small wind turbine. In this context, an urban area with promising wind resources has been selected. Based on the wind conditions and an indicative hydrogen demand for refuelling light-duty fuel cell electric vehicles such as bicycles, the sizing of the wind turbine and the electrolyser has been theoretically calculated. For supporting the daily hydrogen refuelling demand of the fuel cell electric bicycles, which is estimated at approximately 6 kg, it is calculated that a 50 kW wind turbine should be installed in order to power a 70 kW alkaline electrolyser for producing hydrogen. The capital cost of the hydrogen station is calculated at €248,130, while the retail price of the produced hydrogen is estimated to be more than 50.2 €/kg_H2 in order to achieve a positive internal rate of return.Ultimately, the present paper aims at delivering a feasibility study of a small-scale H₂ refuelling station for fuel cell bicycles in order to provide investors with initiatives to implement such schemes in urban environments where problems of low air quality and high traffic are intense.     

Large-scale long-distance land-based hydrogen transportation systems: A comparative techno-economic and greenhouse gas emission assessment

Interest in hydrogen as an energy carrier is growing as countries look to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in hard-to-abate sectors. Previous works have focused on hydrogen production, well-to-wheel analysis of fuel cell vehicles, and vehicle refuelling costs and emissions. These studies use high-level estimates for the hydrogen transportation systems that lack sufficient granularity for techno-economic and GHG emissions analysis. In this work, we assess and compare the unit costs and emission footprints (direct and indirect) of 32 systems for hydrogen transportation. Process-based models were used to examine the transportation of pure hydrogen (hydrogen pipeline and truck transport of gaseous and liquified hydrogen), hydrogen-natural gas blends (pipeline), ammonia (pipeline), and liquid organic hydrogen carriers (pipeline and rail). We used sensitivity and uncertainty analyses to determine the parameters impacting the cost and emission estimates. At 1000 km, the pure hydrogen pipelines have a levelized cost of $0.66/kg H₂ and a GHG footprint of 595 gCO₂eq/kg H₂. At 1000 km, ammonia, liquid organic hydrogen carrier, and truck transport scenarios are more than twice as expensive as pure hydrogen pipeline and hythane, and more than 1.5 times as expensive at 3000 km. The GHG emission footprints of pure hydrogen pipeline transport and ammonia transport are comparable, whereas all other transport systems are more than twice as high. These results may be informative for government agencies developing policies around clean hydrogen internationally.     

Energy distribution analyses of an additional traction battery on hydrogen fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the world and produces only water vapor as a result of chemical reaction that occurred in fuel cells. Therefore, fuel cell electric vehicles, which use hydrogen as fuel, continue its growing trend in the sector. In this study, an energy distribution comparison is carried out between fuel cell electric vehicle and fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle. Hybridization of fuel cell electric vehicle is designed by equipped a traction battery (15 kW). Modeled vehicles were prepared under AVL Cruise program with similar chassis and same fuel cell stacks for regular determining process. Numerical analyses were presented and graphed with instantaneous results in terms of sankey diagrams with a comparison task. WLTP driving cycle is selected for both vehicles and energy input/output values given with detailed analyses. The average consumption results of electric and hydrogen usage is found out as 4.07 kWh and 1.125 kg/100 km respectively for fuel cell electric vehicle. On the other hand, fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle’s average consumption results figured out as 3.701 kWh for electric and 0.701 kg/100 km for hydrogen consumption. As a result of this study, fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle was obtained better results rather than fuel cell electric vehicle according to energy and hydrogen consumption with 8% and 32%, respectively.     

Efficiencies of hydrogen storage systems onboard fuel cell vehicles

Energy efficiency, vehicle weight, driving range, and fuel economy are compared among fuel cell vehicles (FCV) with different types of fuel storage and battery-powered electric vehicles. Three options for onboard fuel storage are examined and compared in order to evaluate the most energy efficient option of storing fuel in fuel cell vehicles: compressed hydrogen gas storage, metal hydride storage, and onboard reformer of methanol. Solar energy is considered the primary source for fair comparison of efficiencies for true zero emission vehicles. Component efficiencies are from the literature. The battery powered electric vehicle has the highest efficiency of conversion from solar energy for a driving range of 300 miles. Among the fuel cell vehicles, the most efficient is the vehicle with onboard compressed hydrogen storage. The compressed gas FCV is also the leader in four other categories: vehicle weight for a given range, driving range for a given weight, efficiency starting with fossil fuels, and miles per gallon equivalent (about equal to a hybrid electric) on urban and highway driving cycles.     

Plug-in hybrid fuel cell vehicles market penetration scenarios

The main objective of this research is to analyze the impact of the market share increase of hydrogen based road vehicles in terms of energy consumption and CO₂, on today's Portuguese light-duty fleet. Actual yearly values of energy consumption and emissions were estimated using COPERT software: 167112 TJ of fossil fuel energy, 12213 kton of CO₂ emission and 141 kton of CO, 20 kton of HC, 46 kton of NO_x and 3 kton of PM. These values represent 20–40% of countries total emissions. Additionally to base fleet, three scenarios of introduction of 10–30% fuel cell vehicles including plug-in hybrids configurations were analysed. Considering the scenarios of increasing hydrogen based vehicles penetration, up to 10% life cycle energy consumption reduction can be obtained if hydrogen from centralized natural gas reforming is considered. Full life cycle CO₂ emissions can also be reduced up to 20% in these scenarios, while local pollutants reach up to 85% reductions. For the purpose of estimating road vehicle technologies energy consumption and CO₂ emissions in a full life cycle perspective, fuel cell, conventional full hybrids and hybrid plug-in technologies were considered with diesel, gasoline, hydrogen and biofuel blends. Energy consumption values were estimated in a real road driving cycle and with ADVISOR software. Materials cradle-to-grave life cycle was estimated using GREET database adapted to Europe electric mix. The main conclusions on CO₂ full life cycle analysis is that light-duty vehicles using fuel cell propulsion technology are highly dependent on hydrogen production pathway. The worst scenario for the current Portuguese and European electric mix is hydrogen produced from on-site electrolysis (in the refuelling stations). In this case full life cycle CO₂ is 270 g/km against 190 g/km for conventional Diesel vehicle, for a typical 150,000 km useful life.     

Willingness to pay for hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles in China: A choice experiment analysis

The hydrogen energy is considered to be main power source of transport sector in the future, and a huge amount of funds have been invested into developing hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). Since FCEVs are in initial development stage and there're few FCEVs on the road, before their expansion this paper intends to conduct an economic analysis for FCEVs by using the choice experiment method. In the choice experiment, 1072 participants were required to select among two FCEVs and one conventional fuel vehicle. Logit models were estimated and then the results were used to calculate the willingness to pay for FCEVs. Results showed that purchase price, driving range, refueling time, fuel cost, emissions reduction, refueling accessibility are significant influences, and the marginal values for every 200 km improvement in driving range, 5 min reduction in refueling time, RMB 0.5/kilometer reduction in fuel cost, 20% reduction in emissions, and 20% improvement of refueling accessibility were estimated to be RMB 49,091, 12,727, 3818, 47,818, and 12,909, respectively. A range of FCEV configurations were calculated, and compared to a gasoline-powered counterpart the extra value that customers were likely to pay for a FCEV ranged from RMB 20,810 to 95,310. These results have significant implications for promoting FCEVs and contribute to better sustainability in transport sector.     

Hydrogen fuel cell hybrid scooter (HFCHS) with plug-in features on Birmingham campus

A commercially available ‘pure’ lead-acid battery electric scooter (GoPed) was converted to a hydrogen fuel cell battery hybrid scooter (HFCHS) in views of investigating the effect of hybridisation on driving duty cycles, range, performance, recharging times, well-to-wheel CO₂ footprint and overall running costs. The HFCHS with plug-in features consisted mainly of a 500 W hydrogen PEM Fuel Cell stack connected to four 12 V 9 Ah lead-acid batteries and two hydrogen metal-hydride canisters supplying pure hydrogen (99.999%) and also acting as heat sink (due to endothermic hydrogen desorption process). In this study, the HFCHS urban driving cycle was compared with that of a conventional petrol and ‘pure’ battery electric scooter. The energy consumed by the HFCHS was 0.11 kWh/km, with an associated running cost of £0.01/km, a well-to-wheel CO₂ of 9.37 g CO₂/km and a maximum range of 15 miles. It was shown that the HFCHS gave better energy efficiencies and speeds compared to battery and petrol powered GoPed scooters alone.     

Techno-economic assessment of a hydrogen refuelling station powered by an on-grid photovoltaic solar system: A case study in Morocco

The present work sheds light on the green hydrogen future in Morocco. A detailed techno-economic assessment and evaluation of a hydrogen refuelling station powered by an on-grid photovoltaic system are presented and discussed. This station is designed to supply the fleet of taxis in a Moroccan city by assuming different scenarios to replace the current taxi system with fuel-cell electric vehicles. A model is proposed to estimate the daily demand for hydrogen, which is used to determine the sizing of the station's components. An economic analysis is then conducted to calculate the cost of hydrogen production. The technical results demonstrate that about 152 kg/day is required to supply the total fleet, while only 30.4 kg/day is enough to provide 20%. It is also found that the costs of hydrogen produced are inversely proportional to the capacity of the hydrogen refuelling station, and the hydrogen cost is about 9.18 $/kg for the larger station and 12.56 $/kg for the smaller one. The proposed system offers an attractive solution to enhance the country's development and reduce the consumption of hydrocarbon fuels.     

Comparative lifecycle assessment of hydrogen fuel cell,electric, CNG,and gasoline-powered vehicles under real driving conditions

Since transportation is one of the major contributors of global warming and air pollution, developing low-emission vehicles can significantly result in a more sustainable environment. In this research study, four different types of personal vehicles, including gasoline-fueled, CNG-fueled, electric, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCV) vehicles, are considered to analyze the role of personal vehicles in transportation. In the first step, based on common vehicles, all selected vehicles are simulated in the Simcenter Amesim Software. The primary aim of the modeling is to investigate the performance of each vehicle under the NYC driving conditions. The results indicate that under the selected driving cycle, CNG and gasoline-fueled vehicles consume 165.44g and 174.07g of CNG and gasoline in each driving cycle respectively, while the electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles consume 1.51% of the battery pack capacity and 26.47 g of hydrogen per driving cycle, respectively. In the next step, to study the vehicles' life cycle assessments (LCA), the GREET software is implemented to investigate the overall performance of the vehicles from the cradle to the grave. Based on the LCA results, CO₂, CO, NOx, GHG, and SOx pollution are examined for all selected vehicles, in which the FCV indicates the best behavior. Finally, the emitted CO₂ for FCV in comparison with gasoline-fueled, CNG-fueled, and EV vehicles were 75.87%, 73.42%, and 35.5% lower, respectively.     

System design and control strategy of the vehicles using hydrogen energy

This paper presented a system design review of fuel cell hybrid vehicle. Fuel supply, hydrogen storage, DC/DC converters, fuel cell system and fuel cell hybrid electric vehicle configurations were also reviewed. We explained the difference of fuel supply requirement between hydrogen vehicle and conventional vehicles. Three different types of hydrogen storage system for fuel supply are briefly introduced: high pressure, liquid storage and metal oxides storage. Considering of the potential risk of explosion, a security hydrogen storage system is designed to restrict gas pressure in the safe range. Due to the poor dynamic performance of fuel cells, DC/DC converters were added in hybrid vehicle system to improve response to the changes of power demand. Requirements that in order to select a suitable DC/DC converter for fuel-cell vehicles design were listed. We also discussed three different configurations of fuel-cell hybrid vehicles: “FC + B”, “FC + C”, and “FC + B + C”, describing both disadvantages and advantages. “FC + B + C” structure has a better performance among three structures because it could provide or absorb peak current during acceleration and emergency braking. Finally, the energy management strategies of fuel cell and were proposed and the automotive energy power requirement of an application example was calculated.     

Hydrogen fuel cell scooter with plug-out features for combined transport and residential power generation

The need for zero emission drive is a global necessity that can contribute to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. In this context, fuel cell hybrid electric vehicles are increasingly attracting interest by governments, companies and academia. While parked they can operate as power generation units, given the proper connection to the electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid integration (V2G), or even power appliances directly (Vehicle-to-Load, V2L). In this study, we analysed the use of a hydrogen fuel cell electric scooter in combined driving, V2G and V2L mode. V2G resulted in the most efficient mode of the three, while V2L led to higher degradation rates. The measured average cell voltage degradation rate was 209 μV/h for driving mode, 356 μV/h for V2G and 648 μV/h for V2L. The insights provided in this study are useful to develop new, optimized and specifically targeted energy management systems for power generation of hydrogen hybrid electric drive vehicles.     

Simulation research on a novel control strategy for fuel cell extended-range vehicles

Adapting to urban transportation and emission reduction in China, fuel cell extended-range commercial vehicles are advocated and studied, which have the advantages of no pollution and long continued driving mileage. According to the features of fuel cell extender and characteristics of the powertrain system of the electric commercial vehicle, the design principle of the extender control strategy is determined in this paper, in order to improve the power and economic performance. A simulation platform for fuel cell plus electric vehicles was established. By comparing and analyzing the characteristics of on-off control strategy, power following control strategy and fuzzy logic control strategy, an on-off power following control strategy is put forward and built which is used for extender controller, and a fuzzy algorithm of following control strategy is studied. By Simulating and analyzing on the platform, the results show that the power following fuzzy algorithm can improve the power performance with the 8.9s accelerating time (0–50 km/h) and better total mileage continued 286.7 km for the powertrain system of fuel cell extended-range commercial vehicles. The research in this paper provides a basis for the in-depth study of the energy management of electric vehicles.     

Techno-economical evaluation of a hydrogen refuelling station powered by Wind-PV hybrid power system: A case study for İzmir-Çeşme

Hydrogen fuelling station is an infrastructure for the commercialisation of hydrogen energy utilising fuel cells, particularly, in the automotive sector. Hydrogen fuel produced by renewable sources such as the solar and wind energy can be an alternative fuel to depress the use of fuels based on fossil sources in the transport sector for sustainable clean energy strategy in future. By replacing the primary fuel with hydrogen fuel produced using renewable sources in road transport sector, environmental benefits can be achieved. In the present study, techno-economic analysis of hydrogen refuelling station powered by wind-photovoltaics (PV) hybrid power system to be installed in ?zmir-Çe?me, Turkey is performed. This analysis is carried out to a design of hydrogen refuelling station which is refuelling 25 fuel cell electric vehicles on a daily basis using hybrid optimisation model for electric renewable (HOMER) software. In this study, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) surface meteorology and solar energy database were used. Therefore, the average wind speed during the year was assessed to be 5.72 m/s and the annual average solar irradiation was used to be 5.08 kW h/m²/day for the considered site. According to optimisation results obtained for the proposed configuration, the levelised cost of hydrogen production was found to be US $7.526–7.866/kg in different system configurations. These results show that hydrogen refuelling station powered by renewable energy is economically appropriate for the considered site. It is expected that this study is the pre-feasibility study and obtained results encougare the hydrogen refuelling station to be established in Turkey by inventors or public institutions.     

The potential role of hydrogen as a sustainable transportation fuel to combat global warming

Hydrogen is recognized as a key source of the sustainable energy solutions. The transportation sector is known as one of the largest fuel consumers of the global energy market. Hydrogen can become a promising fuel for sustainable transportation by providing clean, reliable, safe, convenient, customer friendly, and affordable energy. In this study, the possibility of hydrogen as the major fuel for transportation systems is investigated comprehensively based on the recent data published in the literature. Due to its several characteristic advantages, such as energy density, abundance, ease of transportation, a wide variety of production methods from clean and renewable fuels with zero or minimal emissions; hydrogen appears to be a great chemical fuel which can potentially replace fossil fuel use in internal combustion engines. In order to take advantage of hydrogen as an internal combustion engine fuel, existing engines should be redesigned to avoid abnormal combustion. Hydrogen use in internal combustion engines could enhance system efficiencies, offer higher power outputs per vehicle, and emit lower amounts of greenhouse gases. Even though hydrogen-powered fuel cells have lower emissions than internal combustion engines, they require additional space and weight and they are generally more expensive. Therefore, the scope of this study is hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines. It is also highlighted that in order to become a truly sustainable and clean fuel, hydrogen should be produced from renewable energy and material resources with zero or minimal emissions at high efficiencies. In addition, in this study, conventional, hybrid, electric, biofuel, fuel cell, and hydrogen fueled ICE vehicles are comparatively assessed based on their CO₂ and SO₂ emissions, social cost of carbon, energy and exergy efficiencies, fuel consumption, fuel price, and driving range. The results show that when all of these criteria are taken into account, fuel cell vehicles have the highest average performance ranking (4.97/10), followed by hydrogen fueled ICEs (4.81/10) and biofuel vehicles (4.71/10). On the other hand, conventional vehicles have the lowest average performance ranking (1.21/10), followed by electric vehicles (4.24/10) and hybrid vehicles (4.53/10).     

Micro-generation systems and electrolysers for refuelling private bi-fuel cars at home

An assessment is presented of the prospective use of micro-generation systems in conjunction with electrolysers and hydrogen stores for refuelling private bi-fuel (gasoline/hydrogen) cars with hydrogen. For a range of system sizes and three power source operating modes, predictions are made of the annual travel range on hydrogen and the associated CO₂ savings. A basic system (Mode A) operating solely from the output of a photovoltaic array was found to generate sufficient hydrogen to allow a passenger vehicle with a fuel efficiency of 8.5 l/100 km (33 mpg) to travel 613 km annually per kW of PV installed. An alternative system (Mode B) that permitted network electricity to contribute to hydrogen production, provided that the CO₂ emission factor of the generated hydrogen was half that of gasoline, enabled an annual travel distance of 772 km per kW of PV installed. A hybrid micro-generation system comprising a PV and micro-CHP system (Mode C), where the electricity that would otherwise be exported from the dwelling was diverted to hydrogen production, achieved a more consistent hydrogen production rate across the year. This resulted in a lower on-site storage requirement; when compared with Mode A, it provided an additional annual travel distance on hydrogen of between 1285 and 1833 km. A utility factor was employed to indicate the extent to which a system design could deliver a given daily driving distance on hydrogen across the year. High utility factors (>70%) were only achievable for modest daily driving distances (10–17 km) for the considered range of PV sizes (1.7–8.5 kW).     

The fuel cell electric vehicles: The highlight review

Transportation sector is the important sector and consumed the most fossil fuel in the world. Since COVID-19 started in 2019, this sector had become the world connector because every country relies on logistics. The transportation sector does not only deal with the human transportation but also relates to logistics. Research in every country has searched for alternative transportation to replace internal combustion engines using fossil fuel, one of the most prominent choices is fuel cells. Fuel cells can use hydrogen as fuel. Hydrogen can be fed to the fuel cells to provide electric power to drive vehicles, no greenhouse gas emission and no direct combustion required. The fuel cells have been developed widely as the 21st century energy-conservation devices for mobile, stationary, and especially vehicles. The fuel cell electric vehicles using hydrogen as fuel were also called hydrogen fuel cell vehicles or hydrogen electric vehicles. The fuel cells were misconceived by several people that they were batteries, but the fuel cells could provide electric power continuously if their fuel was provided continuously. The batteries could provide electric power as their only capacities, when all ions are released, no power could be provided. Because the fuel cell vehicles play important roles for our future transportation, the overall review for these vehicles is significantly interesting. This overall review can provide general and technical information, variety of readers; vehicle users, manufacturers, and scientists, can perceive and understand the fuel cell vehicles within this review. The readers can realize how important the fuel cell technologies are and support research around the world to drive the fuel cell vehicles to be the leading vehicles in our sustainable developing world.     

Cost of a potential hydrogen-refueling network for heavy-duty vehicles with long-haul application in Germany 2050

Long-distance road-freight transport emits a large share of Germany's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A potential solution for reducing GHG emissions in this sector is to use green hydrogen in fuel cell electric vehicles (FC-HDV) and establish an accompanying hydrogen refueling station (HRS) network. In this paper, we apply an existing refueling network design model to a HDV-HRS network for Germany until 2050 based on German traffic data for heavy-duty trucks and estimate its costs. Comparing different fuel supply scenarios (pipeline vs. on-site), The on-site scenario results show a network consisting of 137 stations at a cost of 8.38 billion € per year in 2050 (0.40 € per vehicle km), while the centralized scenario with the same amount of stations shows a cheaper cost with 7.25 billion euros per year (0.35 € per vehicle km). The hydrogen cost (LCOH) varies from 5.59 €/kg (pipeline) to 6.47 €/kg (on-site) in 2050.