FuelCellsWorks

GRAND FORKS–After 6 years of diligent prosecution, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) Foundation in Grand Forks, North Dakota, allowance for a patent application on a system that produces high-pressure hydrogen on-demand. The final patent will be approved in the very near future.

The EERC technology converts alcohols or liquid fuels, such as ethanol, methanol, and gasoline, to high-pressure hydrogen at the time of fueling. Utilizing this state-of-the-art process, the prohibitive infrastructure costs of nationwide hydrogen transportation and storage will be eliminated so that hydrogen refueling will be accessible and affordable. The hydrogen is produced on-site, on-demand at the fuel pump, rather than at a separate location.

“Through the hydrogen programs at the EERC, we are breaking down barriers, bringing down the costs, and shortening the timetable to the point where hydrogen will be a major component of our national energy future,” said EERC Director Gerald Groenewold. “The high-pressure hydrogen production technology is a cornerstone technology for achieving those goals.”

Researchers in the EERC’s National Center for Hydrogen Technology, with support from the U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory and over 85 corporate partners, have proved the conversion of methanol into hydrogen and are working toward obtaining similar results for ethanol and hydrocarbon fuels, including military jet fuel.

This technology is a cornerstone for the EERC’s proposed United States-Israel Hydrogen Fueling and Fleet Demonstration, which proposes to demonstrate hydrogen as a fuel for transit buses in North Dakota and Tel Aviv, Israel. The EERC is currently seeking federal cofunding for that project.

Tom Bechtel, EERC Foundation Board President and the Principal at TFB Consulting Services in New Bern, North Carolina, said, “The EERC Foundation Board of Directors is extremely proud of this milestone. It is a marvelous example of the ever-increasing portfolio of EERC technologies the Foundation is bringing to commercial deployment.”

The technology is also being commercialized for many other different applications as well as with a variety of corporate and governmental partners and includes industrial applications that provide near-term commercial opportunities for North Dakota in manufacturing and cold-weather testing.

“This patent allowance will clearly strengthen the ability of the EERC Foundation to license the technology,” said Carsten Heide, Associate Director for Intellectual Property Management and Technology Commercialization. “We are continually making design advancements to this technology and are broadening the patent to protect those new developments.” The EERC Foundation houses the rights to technologies developed by the EERC and promotes business relationships with strategic partners interested in commercializing those technologies. The patent term expires on December 13, 2024.

Vasilios Manousiouthakis, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, has been awarded $2.1 million in grant funding to build a state-of-the-art hydrogen fueling station on the UCLA campus.

A $1.7 million grant from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and a $400,000 grant from the state’s Mobile Source Air Pollution Reduction Review Committee (MSRC) will go toward the construction of one of the largest hydrogen fueling stations in California, with a capacity to produce 140 kilograms of hydrogen a day for use in hydrogen-powered vehicles.

“The grants will enable UCLA to achieve a number of its long-term goals for promoting sustainability, both on campus and in the greater Los Angeles region,” said Michael Swords, executive director of Strategic Research Initiatives at UCLA. “The development of this hydrogen fueling station will also provide our students with a state-of-the-art learning and research facility where they can study and evaluate the logistics of hydrogen generation, distribution and supply — all of this while also providing a much needed boost to the development of the ‘hydrogen highway’ here in California.”

The station, which will be available for use by the public, will be run by UCLA Engineering’s Hydrogen Engineering Research Consortium (HERC), which Manousiouthakis directs. The consortium was established in 2005 after UCLA partnered with DaimlerChrysler Corp. and global energy company BP to help demonstrate elements of the hydrogen economy infrastructure.

“The goal of HERC is to accelerate the onset of the hydrogen economy through the development and demonstration of technologies for the production, storage, transportation and use of hydrogen,” Manousiouthakis said. “The new UCLA hydrogen fueling station will prove to be another milestone achievement in our efforts.”

UCLA has been at the forefront of hydrogen-related research since the 1970s, first with its student-built hydrogen-fueled car, which won the national Urban Vehicle Design Competition, and more recently with its novel cycle to produce hydrogen through the thermochemical decomposition of water.

Major energy providers and automotive manufacturers view hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicles as the most sustainable mobility solution in the long term. Manousiouthakis, a systems engineering expert who focuses on the development of novel hydrogen production methods, believes that hydrogen production based on the reforming of natural gas — a process that involves the endothermic transformation of natural gas and water into hydrogen and carbon dioxide — is the most economical route for hydrogen production today.

Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles generate minimal to no pollution and emit 50 percent less greenhouse gases and 90 percent less volatile organic, smog-forming and toxic emissions than today’s gasoline-powered vehicles, even when powered by hydrogen produced from natural gas.

“With this station, we aim to show that methane reforming–based stations essentially provide an answer to the question of hydrogen infrastructure,” Manousiouthakis said. “The proposed fueling station will demonstrate that we can effectively utilize the existing natural gas infrastructure to deliver hydrogen on-site. We won’t have to build new pipelines for hydrogen.”

The current environmental outlook for California is grim, and change is critical. California’s air pollution is among the worst in the world, and, according to HERC, if the state were a country, it would be world’s fifth-largest producer of global warming emissions. More than 60 percent of the state’s air pollution comes from mobile sources.

The grants from CARB and MSRC are part of a statewide initiative to help defray the costs of expanding and improving California’s network of natural gas and hydrogen fueling stations. CARB in particular is helping to advance Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “hydrogen highway” initiative to promote the creation of a hydrogen refueling network.

Furthermore, with recent amendments to the state’s Zero Emissions Vehicle program, automakers will be required to place 7,500 zero-emissions vehicles on the road by 2014. Depending on the availability of hydrogen fueling stations, some of them will be fuel-cell vehicles.

Today there are 27 operational hydrogen fueling stations throughout the state, with 17 additional stations in the planning stage. Manousiouthakis hopes the new station, to be located near UCLA’s transit facility at the corner of Veteran and Kinross avenues, will be up and running by the end of this year.

The UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, established in 1945, offers 28 academic and professional degree programs, including an interdepartmental graduate degree program in biomedical engineering. Ranked among the top 10 engineering schools at public universities nationwide, the school is home to five multimillion-dollar interdisciplinary research centers in wireless sensor systems, nanotechnology, nanomanufacturing and nanoelectronics, all funded by federal and private agencies.

Here is the complete list of 16th District investments:

Army Applications of Direct Carbon Fuel Cells: $2.8 million to deliver in 36 months an improved energy conversion method to reduce the energy burden of Army forward operating bases. Recipient: Stark State College, Canton.

Military Fuel Cell Genset Technology Demonstration: $3 million to create tactical generator sets used by the Department of Defense which consume 357 million gallons of fuel annually because of use by soldiers for electrical power needs ranging from command post C2 systems, to air conditioning tents, to field kitchens. Recipient: Stark State College of Technology, North Canton.

Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Systems PVL Pilot Line: $2 million to upgrade the clean room at the Stark State Fuel Cell Prototyping Center (FCPC) to accommodate Print Verification Line (PVL) equipment for the development of the manufacturing process, begin the PVL and conduct fuel cell stack tests with the active tubes that are produced. Recipient: Stark State College of Technology, North Canton.

Fuel Cell Services Learning Center: $2 million to grow Phase III of a fuel cell campus at Stark State College. Recipient: Stark State College, North Canton.

DHAHRAN–Fuel cells will be an important component in the energy industry in the near future and the Center of Research Excellence in Renewable Energy (CoRERE) will help develop the industry in the Kingdom, said Abdul Aziz Al-Suwayyan, vice rector for Academic Affairs at the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), while inaugurating a workshop on renewable energy here recently.

Al-Suwayyan said CoRERE, which organized the workshop, is geared to commission research on the subject.

The workshop brought together representatives of private companies, university officials, policymakers, scientists, engineers and academicians who exchanged ideas and information on the advancement of fuel cell technology.

Fuel cells generate electrical power quietly and efficiently without pollution. Simply put, a fuel cell is an electrochemical energy conversion device that converts fuel — such as hydrogen and methanol — into electricity directly.

Pure water is the only byproduct. Fuel cells claim to solve the two most important problems of the modern era — environment and energy.

Habib Abulhamayel, director of CoRERE, presented an overview of the activities of the center. He said the Saudi National Center for Renewable Energy has actively engaged researchers and engineers to develop the technology in the Kingdom.

“We are currently working on a new device that converts carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons, which would help in cleaning the environment and producing usable materials,” said S.U. Rahman, assistant director of the center, during a presentation.

Key speaker Vinu Ajayan, senior scientist from Japan’s National Institute for Material Sciences, spoke on the use of advanced functional nano-materials for energy and environment. Paul Dickerson, senior partner at Haynes and Boone’s Clean Tech, US, emphasized the commercialization of fuel cells technology and expanded on the current status of commercialization in the US.

S.M. Javaid Zaidi, head of the Fuel Cell Research Group at CoRERE, spoke on the fuel cell research activity of his group at KFUPM that is being carried out in collaboration with laboratories in Japan and India.

S. Basu, Department of Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, explained the usefulness and development requirements of the solid oxide fuel cell.

Shakeel Ahmad, research engineer at CRP, Research Institute, KFUPM, touched on the production of hydrogen by using the technology.

The Ministry of Higher Education established CoRERE in 2007 with the aim of furthering research and development in all major areas of renewable energy, especially solar energy.