The UK Government has just launched a £2 million competition to promote roll-out of hydrogen-fuelled fleet vehicles. Public and private sector fleets can get up to 75% off the cost of zero-emission fuel cell electric vehicles. The £2 million fund was launched by the UK Government’s Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) on Tuesday 10th…
Hydrogen
Low carbon process improves hydrogen yields from coal and biomass
While the cleanest hydrogen is produced from renewables, and the majority from natural gas, there remains industrial demand for cheap hydrogen from cheap sources. Coal or biomass solid fuel reactors can be used to cheaply produce hydrogen, but the low yield and carbon emissions have hitherto made this an unattractive long-term solution. However, researchers from…
A feasibility study of storing hydrogen in depleted gas reservoirs
If a full scale hydrogen economy is to become a reality, we are going to be producing a lot of hard-to-store fuel. One of the advantages of hydrogen as a resource is that it can be produced during times of surplus renewable energy and stored for a rainy day. However, for this cycle to prove…
EasyJet to trial hybrid fuel-cell systems for air fleet
British low-cost airline EasyJet has announced its plan to cut fuel costs and carbon emissions by turning to hydrogen fuel cell technology. This doesn’t mean they’re about to fly on hydrogen power – we’re not quite there yet – but EasyJet believes it can use hydrogen fuel cells to power aircraft’s taxiing to and from…
Hydrogen takes to the sky
Aerial drones have already changed the face of warfare and become a favoured toy for the technorati. Now they look set to shake up commercial delivery systems as well, with Google and Amazon prepping competing drone delivery systems for launch over the next eighteen months. Drones are still held back, however, by their power sources….
A model for an integrated wind+hydrogen network for the UK
For all the strides being made in hydrogen fuel cell transportation, we are still a long, long way from having hydrogen form a central pillar in our energy infrastructure. What would the UK look like with a hydrogen based transport sector? Is it even possible, let alone feasible? To try and answer that question, a…
Nickel-based catalyst performs competitively with platinum in hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cells
The hunt for platinum’s successor as a hydrogen oxidation catalyst continues in this month’s Nature Communications (Zhuang, Z. et al. Nickel supported on nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes as hydrogen oxidation reaction catalyst in alkaline electrolyte. Nat. Commun. 7:10141 doi: 10.1038/ncomms10141 (2016)). A research team from the University of Delaware, in partnership with Beijing University of Chemical…
ITM Power and CEME to build East London refuelling station
Fuel cell company ITM Power has signed a memorandum of understanding with The Centre for Engineering and Manufacturing Excellence (CEME) to build a hydrogen refuelling station at CEME’s East London campus. The groups aim to produce something more than just a place to top up. The plans for the site would make it the de…
Berkeley Lab funded for hydrogen storage research
Berkeley Lab in California has just been awarded $8 million from the US Department of Energy for two of their projects: one to find new materials for hydrogen storage and another for optimizing fuel-cell performance and durability. The grant, from the Fuel Cell Technologies Office, shows that the American government is taking hydrogen as a…
Cobalt catalyst outperforms metal-free competitors
The race to find a substitute to platinum as a fuel-cell catalyst continues, with cobalt the latest alternative to be put forth. In a Nature Communications article from last week, a Chinese-American team reported successful results by attaching a small number of cobalt atoms to nitrogen pre-embedded in a graphene substrate. Here, we report an…