ITM Power revealed a new hydrogen production technology that it claims marks the beginning of the hydrogen age.
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At a low key launch at the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) offices in central London, the company also showed a Ford Focus that had been converted to run on hydrogen.
ITM showed off its technology in the form of a home hydrogen home refuelling station that could be used to power a car, as well as heat the home, and be fed into a fuel cell to produce electricity for lighting and appliances. The company says the home refuelling station overcomes two of the major barriers to hydrogen – cost and infrastructure.
“This technology is about economics, not thermodynamics,” said Jim Heathcote, CEO of ITM Power.
The reason this technology has not been available before is cost. ITM has found a way to replace the proton exchange membrane (PEM) in a conventional electrolyser with a liquid mix of chemicals that is then polymerised. The cost is around 1% of the cost of traditional membrane materials, which contain platinum. As a result a home refuelling station could cost the same as a top-line domestic central heating/hot water boiler or cooker [stove] – around GBP2-3,000 (about $US4,000-6,000).
ITM is looking in the US and Germany for its first major licensing customers. The UK is too slow to catch on, said Heathcote, noting that the US is much more concerned about peak oil and prepared to deal with energy security issues than the UK and other countries.
The car itself has a range of just 25 miles (about 40km), but the advantage of the hydrogen production system is that it can tolerate intermittent energy sources – if it is powered by a solar panel, it will produce hydrogen when solar energy is available. Electric batteries, which are another way of harnessing renewable energy, require a more regular charge.
The range can be increased four-fold if the hydrogen is compressed, but a compressor is expensive and it is likely that drivers would have to go to a commercial refuelling station to do that.
To convert a petrol car to hydrogen is relatively simple, ITM claims. It needs only a tank, an extra line of injectors and an electronic chip to ‘trick the engine’.
In the Focus demonstrator, the tank completely filled the boot space but ITM engineers argued that, if the tank were fitted as original equipment, vehicle manufacturers could design it to fit under the floor quite easily. OEMs could also engineer engines to improve the range while improvements currently under way would improve hydrogen fuel efficiency too.
Rolling out the technology effectively is key for ITM. It will start by displacing the existing market for electrolysers – mainly industrial applications. But it is also hoping to talk to vehicle manufacturers, many of whom are working on hydrogen technology already but unable to move forward because of the lack of available refuelling infrastructure.
Is the hydrogen age any nearer because of ITM Power’s technology? Probably, but even ITM is talking a timescale of many years.
Sue Brown
