I’ve got to say, one can truly start envisioning a future hydrogen economy when you take a look at Honda’s Home Energy Station III. Let’s suspend belief. Let’s imagine, for the moment, that fuel-cell vehicles can be made affordably and that there is an unlimited supply of natural gas in the earth. What Honda’s trying to do is create a one-stop fuelling shop for your home and vehicle, not unlike past efforts by Stuart Energy before it was acquired by Hydrogenics. The key, at least initially, is to have a natural gas line running into the home, which would serve as the energy station’s hydrogen source fuel.

“The Home Energy Station III is designed to work in a home-based refueling environment and is able to supply a sufficient amount of hydrogen to power a fuel cell vehicle… while providing electricity for an average-sized household,” according to Honda. “A goal of this energy station is to provide high overall energy efficiency and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the more effective use of natural gas.”

The station is also able to function as a backup power generation system during power outages by using the hydrogen in the storage tank to power the internal fuel cell, providing as much as 5 kilowatts of electrical power to the home in normal and emergency conditions.

Using natural gas directly in an on-site fuel cell is a heck of a lot better than using electricity from natural-gas-fired power plants to produce hydrogen through water electrolysis. It’s simply more efficient, and there’s no line loss by doing it locally at the point of use. Fact is, a good chunk of homes these days are supplied with natural gas so you would have an instant market to pitch to.

My only question about the Honda Home Energy Station III — which, as a third-generation prototype, is still a prototype — is whether it captures waste heat from the process to provide home water/air heating. I have my doubts, because the station is using technology from Plug Power Inc., which uses proton exchange membrane fuel cells that operate at relatively low temperatures — 60 to 160 degrees Celsius. Not that some heat couldn’t be captured and applied, but it would have to complement a traditional natural gas heating system.

On the other hand, solid-oxide fuel cells operate at much higher temperatures, which is why companies such as Fuel Cell Technologies (FCT) of Kingston are touting their products for providing both electricity and heating. Problem is higher heat means slower startup times, and FCT in particular doesn’t have a hydrogen storage/fuelling angle with its product, meaning no transportation angle.

I guess you can’t have it all. And, of course, we’d all love to see a future of hydrogen production through water electrolysis, with renewable energy such as solar or wind as the power source. Maybe one day we can have hybrid hydrogen production systems that switch back and forth between natural gas reformation and electrolysis, allowing the solar panels on our rooftops to produce hydrogen for a rainy day.

Yeah, right. Maybe if you’ve got a million bucks to spend. This is all technically possible today. Just prohibitively expensive.

I’ve been hearing quite a bit over the past year about hydrogen fuel injection (HFI) technology, and how it’s a way today of dramatically improving fuel efficiency and reducing pollutants from diesel-fuelled vehicles. It’s also being pitched as a “bridge” to the hydrogen economy and the age of mass market fuel-cell vehicles. The Energy Blog had an entry recently about how truck drivers are beginning to retrofit their rigs with hydrogen-injection systems, in this case from a Bowmanville, Ontario-based company called Canadian Hydrogen Energy Co. This seems to be a field that Canada has cornered, for better or worse. There are two other Ontario companies I know of – Dynamic Fuel Systems Inc. (JetStar) and Hy-Drive Technologies Ltd. — that market the same kind of technology and are making similar claims. All three have taken legal action against each other, claiming patent infringement.

The big question is: Does this technology work? The idea is that you fit a diesel vehicle with an on-board electrolysis unit that produces small amounts of hydrogen from distilled water. That hydrogen is then injected into the air intake manifold of the vehicle, mixing with the air and allowing a more complete combustion of the fuel. The hydrogen, even in small amounts, allows the mixture to burn hotter and, as a result, fewer pollutants result and engine efficiency increases. Theoretically.

Personally, when somebody from one of these companies explains how the technology works, I’m sold. It makes sense. Canadian Hydrogen Energy Company in particular got an added shot of credibility when Steve Gilchrist, former alternative energy commissioner of Ontario, joined the company as a vice-president. But in talking with some fleet operators, there’s a lot of skepticism in the market that shouldn’t be ruled out.

Even if we are to believe hydrogen fuel injection works in principle, are the claims of these companies valid? Canadian Hydrogen Energy Company, for example, guarantees at least 10 per cent in fuel savings and talks about a 50 per cent reduction in exhaust emissions. The company also frequently refers to the fact that it has been certified by the Environmental Technology Verification Program, which is a joint venture of Environment Canada and Industry Canada to provide “credible and independent verification of technology performance claims.”

But if you look at what the ETV program has verified, you find only a 4.44 per cent reduction in fuel consumption, a 6.17 per cent reduction in total hydrocarbon emissions, a 4.34 per cent reduction in NOx, and a 7 per cent reduction in particulate matter. Not that these don’t represent an improvement, but they certainly don’t measure up to the claims.

With respect to Dynamic Fuel Systems, engineers from Environment Canada released a report in January on the company’s technology (NOTE: I have deleted access to this report at the request of Dynamic Fuel, which challenges the accurancy of the report’s findings and had their lawyers send a polite request to take it down). The report wasn’t favourable — let’s keep it at that.

Bill Brown, manager of vehicle engineering at the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), isn’t convinced the energy balance offered by using the technology is a win for customers. “The energy requirement to develop hydrogen from water through an electrolysis process, which they’re doing from the vehicle as they drive along, is really intense energy.”

Not surprisingly, the TTC is among those who are skeptical of hydrogen fuel injection claims.

So there you go — food for thought. I wouldn’t count myself as a complete skeptic, but accepting hydrogen-fuel injection claims at face value could lead you down the path of disappointment. All that said, I don’t rule out the potential. In fact, MIT is taking part in a hydrogen-injection project, which to me lends some credibility to the concept. Perhaps the skeptics will be proven wrong.

I’ve been hearing quite a bit over the past year about hydrogen fuel injection (HFI) technology, and how it’s a way today of dramatically improving fuel efficiency and reducing pollutants from diesel-fuelled vehicles. It’s also being pitched as a “bridge” to the hydrogen economy and the age of mass market fuel-cell vehicles. The Energy Blog had an entry recently about how truck drivers are beginning to retrofit their rigs with hydrogen-injection systems, in this case from a Bowmanville, Ontario-based company called Canadian Hydrogen Energy Co. This seems to be a field that Canada has cornered, for better or worse. There are two other Ontario companies I know of – Dynamic Fuel Systems Inc. (JetStar) and Hy-Drive Technologies Ltd. — that market the same kind of technology and are making similar claims. All three have taken legal action against each other, claiming patent infringement.

The big question is: Does this technology work? The idea is that you fit a diesel vehicle with an on-board electrolysis unit that produces small amounts of hydrogen from distilled water. That hydrogen is then injected into the air intake manifold of the vehicle, mixing with the air and allowing a more complete combustion of the fuel. The hydrogen, even in small amounts, allows the mixture to burn hotter and, as a result, fewer pollutants result and engine efficiency increases. Theoretically.

Personally, when somebody from one of these companies explains how the technology works, I’m sold. It makes sense. Canadian Hydrogen Energy Company in particular got an added shot of credibility when Steve Gilchrist, former alternative energy commissioner of Ontario, joined the company as a vice-president. But in talking with some fleet operators, there’s a lot of skepticism in the market that shouldn’t be ruled out.

Even if we are to believe hydrogen fuel injection works in principle, are the claims of these companies valid? Canadian Hydrogen Energy Company, for example, guarantees at least 10 per cent in fuel savings and talks about a 50 per cent reduction in exhaust emissions. The company also frequently refers to the fact that it has been certified by the Environmental Technology Verification Program, which is a joint venture of Environment Canada and Industry Canada to provide “credible and independent verification of technology performance claims.”

But if you look at what the ETV program has verified, you find only a 4.44 per cent reduction in fuel consumption, a 6.17 per cent reduction in total hydrocarbon emissions, a 4.34 per cent reduction in NOx, and a 7 per cent reduction in particulate matter. Not that these don’t represent an improvement, but they certainly don’t measure up to the claims.

With respect to Dynamic Fuel Systems, engineers from Environment Canada released a report in January on the company’s technology (NOTE: I have deleted access to this report at the request of Dynamic Fuel, which challenges the accurancy of the report’s findings and had their lawyers send a polite request to take it down). The report wasn’t favourable — let’s keep it at that.

Bill Brown, manager of vehicle engineering at the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), isn’t convinced the energy balance offered by using the technology is a win for customers. “The energy requirement to develop hydrogen from water through an electrolysis process, which they’re doing from the vehicle as they drive along, is really intense energy.”

Not surprisingly, the TTC is among those who are skeptical of hydrogen fuel injection claims.

So there you go — food for thought. I wouldn’t count myself as a complete skeptic, but accepting hydrogen-fuel injection claims at face value could lead you down the path of disappointment. All that said, I don’t rule out the potential. In fact, MIT is taking part in a hydrogen-injection project, which to me lends some credibility to the concept. Perhaps the skeptics will be proven wrong.

For those who are interested, here’s a story I wrote in today’s Toronto Star about the Weyburn Project, which is an international study of EnCana Corp.’s use of carbon dioxide to extract hard-to-get oil from its 50-year-old Weyburn oil field in southeast Saskatchewan. The CO2 is being pumped in via a 200 mile pipeline from a coal gasification facility in North Dakota.

It’s a combination of enhanced oil recovery and carbon sequestration. On top of getting access to the oil, EnCana has apparently pumped 4.5 million tonnes of byproduct CO2 into the ground that would otherwise be released into the atomsphere. U.S. energy secretary Samuel Bodman is apparently hyped about the prospect of future EOR/sequestration efforts.

“The success of the Weyburn Project could have incredible implications for reducing CO2 emissions and increasing America’s oil production,” said Bodman in a statement from the U.S. Department of Energy. “Just by applying this technique to the oil fields of Western Canada we would see billions of additional barrels of oil and a reduction of CO2 emissions equivalent to pulling more than 200 million cars off the road for a year.”

Well, I guess it’s a lesser evil. It doesn’t do much for weaning us off fossil fuels, but it at least finds a place for storing a harmful greenhouse gas… assuming it stays there. I’m always suspicious of any effort where future generations could end up inheriting a problem that wasn’t a problem when we created it.

For those who are interested, here’s a story I wrote in today’s Toronto Star about the Weyburn Project, which is an international study of EnCana Corp.’s use of carbon dioxide to extract hard-to-get oil from its 50-year-old Weyburn oil field in southeast Saskatchewan. The CO2 is being pumped in via a 200 mile pipeline from a coal gasification facility in North Dakota.

It’s a combination of enhanced oil recovery and carbon sequestration. On top of getting access to the oil, EnCana has apparently pumped 4.5 million tonnes of byproduct CO2 into the ground that would otherwise be released into the atomsphere. U.S. energy secretary Samuel Bodman is apparently hyped about the prospect of future EOR/sequestration efforts.

“The success of the Weyburn Project could have incredible implications for reducing CO2 emissions and increasing America’s oil production,” said Bodman in a statement from the U.S. Department of Energy. “Just by applying this technique to the oil fields of Western Canada we would see billions of additional barrels of oil and a reduction of CO2 emissions equivalent to pulling more than 200 million cars off the road for a year.”

Well, I guess it’s a lesser evil. It doesn’t do much for weaning us off fossil fuels, but it at least finds a place for storing a harmful greenhouse gas… assuming it stays there. I’m always suspicious of any effort where future generations could end up inheriting a problem that wasn’t a problem when we created it.