Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are here and we are becoming increasingly aware of their design, charging needs and environmental benefits. However, hydrogen is believed to be by many the next up and coming sustainable fuel alternative – especially for the very long-term.
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Intelligent Energy, a UK-based hydrogen fuel cell manufacturer, have developed products based on their own hydrogen fuel cell technology, allowing the company to provide power solutions from 800w to over 300kW. So far, this technology has been used in a range of applications including automotive and aerospace.
The company’s ‘Project Ester’ develops hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle technology, focused on an evaporatively cooled fuel system which has been designed for use in passenger vehicles as well as heavy-duty where conventional battery-electric based solutions fail to deliver.
We spoke to Ashley Kells, programme director, Intelligent Energy, to learn more about the benefits of hydrogen as well as the company’s process for manufacturing hydrogen cells.
Just Auto (JA): Could you provide some background on the company?
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By GlobalDataAshley Kells (AK): Intelligent Energy was founded in 2001. It was formed by IPO and research that had been undertaken at Loughborough University.
We’ve been focusing on several different products and commercialising those products. We do that across quite a wide range. Anything from low watt numbers up to a megawatt. Low watt numbers are anything from UAV drones, delivery inspection or forklift trucks for green construction sites.
We have our technology in the BMW factory in Leipzig. The automated guided vehicles are flat platform machines. They move pallets autonomously around the factory. They are now replacing the batteries with fuel cells.
Then we move into the bigger space, which is anything above 15 kilowatts; that’s cars, trucks, buses. Then there’s the expansion from that into stationary power; we can take the essential building block and essentially use under-used hydrogen.
Quite often there is hydrogen that otherwise is wasted. Sometimes it’s from petrochemical use, which isn’t great, sometimes from wind, or perhaps hydraulic hydroelectric. Rather than wasting the electricity, you can put it into hydrogen, generate electricity from that as and when you need it, because hydrogen is relatively easy to store compared to electricity in a battery, and then you can pump it back onto the grid.
What is project Ester?
A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that converts the energy carried in hydrogen into electricity with the by-product of heat and water. We’ve developed a metallic-based cell that’s scalable, and that same cell is used in our heavy-duty truck, bus and in our passenger car applications.
We’ve developed two complete fuel cell engines
Think of a loaf of bread. The number of slices dictates the voltage, and the size of it dictates the current. Using the exact same slice of bread cell, we can build up different size fuel cells for trucks and for a car. One of the reasons we’ve done that, of course, is try and get economies of scale.
We’ve developed two complete fuel cell engines; that ‘complete’ is a real key thing. It sounds like well, what else would you have done? Actually, a lot of people just do the stack. The stack on its own won’t do anything.
What we do is we provide two complete engines, one in heavy-duty; it’s a little bit more robust but it’s still yields that same core sell ticket for economies of scale, and it still uses a lot of common components – although some key ones are just scaled a little differently.
We’ve got a couple installed in a bus in Taiwan and we’re about to instal them into a UK truck. They’re out there, we’re selling them and they are a turnkey solution. You do put hydrogen in, and you get electricity, some heat, and a bit of water out.
We have the same for the passenger car space, it’s a little bit smaller and it has been optimised to fit under the bonnet of a car. We’ve developed is around 157 kilowatts, peak.
What makes this technology unique?
It’s unique in terms of doing the whole thing. There are a few other companies that will provide a stack. Some supply it without a compressor, without the turbo equivalent. We did the whole lot. What that means is that our customers, whether they’re massive OEMs or whether they’re smaller companies, we can get moving quicker. It’s all about time to get things moving.
Then over time it might be the people on the customer side take on more responsibility to impart their own DNA on the product. One thing that’s quite difficult to achieve is keeping that car DNA. A BMW feels different to an Audi. With the fuel cell, there is an opportunity to be able to tailor some of that as you go down the road.
The whole unit goes under the bonnet and has been designed to fit under the bonnet. There are obviously a few key things to bear in mind at the design stage – eg pedestrian safety dictating bonnet heights, having a lower bonnet makes a big difference and we’ve designed for that.
One of the key things that differentiates us from our competitors is the way we cool our fuel cell.
To some degree is a fuel cell is a by-product of electricity. It generates heat and that’s got to go somewhere. Typically, our competitors design a fuel cell stack which has got active plates, then a bit of a gap, and then another active plate, then a bit of a gap.
One of the key things that differentiates us from our competitors is the way we cool our fuel cell.
What they’re doing is they’re pumping glycol, antifreeze, around the stack. That requires a radiator that needs to go with it to cool things down. Okay, no different we need a radiator as well. However, what Intelligent Energy do is we inject water directly into the fuel cell. Every single cell is active, so we don’t have any glycol cooling in the stack.
What that means is when it comes to our cooling, we’ve got a more efficient way of cooling because it’s a mix of air and water rather than glycol that we’re cooling. It means that we can have a radiator that’s approximately 30% smaller than a competitor would have.
What are some of the advantages of hydrogen?
One of the key things is getting the cost down. One of the reasons for being able to do that with a with a fuel cell is that if you take all the raw components and put them in a pile, the individual ingredients are relatively low cost.
Compare with batteries, for example. One of the challenges with batteries, apart from recycling, is that the material cost of the precious metals is quite challenging. These are rare commodities that really takes some finding and some extraction and processing. We can recycle our fuel cells and strip out the platinum and reuse it. We already do that.
We’re not saying that it’s a silver bullet that displaces batteries and things like that. That’s just not the case. It has advantages for applications where it makes more sense.
What does the UK have to do to support hydrogen?
It’s all about the refuelling infrastructure and certainly for passenger cars and for up to of 19 tonne vehicles, it needs the public infrastructure. Over the last five years, the numbers of publicly available refuelling stations for hydrogen have diminished in UK.
This is a shame because it then does become a challenge to introduce fuel cells. The infrastructure is not there to support companies who might want to do a trail with the technology. Certainly, having some public feelers with hydrogen at a reasonable cost would help that side of the market.
As that moves more in a positive direction then it can also open opportunities for passenger cars. There are passenger cars that run on hydrogen today; there are some filling stations for them. Having focus on getting some fuelling infrastructure would be good.
We’d love to be able to sell in UK, we’re a UK company. Our shareholder wants to make a difference in UK, and that’s one of the reasons why he owns Intelligent Energy to try and make a difference, and we would really love to do that. But now, it’s difficult.
There are some companies doing some good work such as Innovate UK and the Advanced Propulsion Centre; there are some positives but there is much more that can be done.
What are your future predictions for hydrogen use?
In 2030, we will have a significant number of heavy-duty vehicles on the roads. We’ll be focusing on decarbonising and it’s an obvious solution. There will be fuelling stations at strategic locations for them to make it easier.
Sainsbury’s delivery for groceries or whatever it is people use, I think that’s a key one. We would have seen batteries doing it now if that made sense, it’s difficult to make sense. They often go quite large distances to get to homes. Hydrogen can work.
One of the things we do need to be mindful of is that China is throwing everything into this.
We’ll see a lot in terms of passenger cars. I think in five years it will probably be how battery vehicles were five years ago, something like that. You’ll see maybe one variant, two variants. Probably the larger vehicles, I would say so maybe things like SUVs. Two reasons for that. One is it’s easier to package, but the prime reason is they tend to come out with a premium price.
One of the things we do need to be mindful of is that China is throwing everything into this. Firstly, it’s a big country and they like to travel around at weekend; they’re okay with batteries in the week, but on the weekend, they tend to like to go out of their cities. That’s where fuel cells make sense.
Second reason is if you look anywhere north of Beijing, there’s a massive area of space above there and millions of people and batteries are struggling there because of low winter temperatures. Once you get to low temperatures, then batteries do struggle a bit. I’m not slating batteries; I’m just saying why China is interested in hydrogen.
Fuel cells is a real option for them. I imagine we’ll see more Chinese technology finding its way over here. In a similar way that we found American technology in the form of Tesla in batteries coming out with a new completely new car company.
