Alternative Energy

[QuickTrade]

Cost Of Filling Up.
Here's something else I found. Hope this helps. Remember, even though they are still trying to get the fuel cells to drive further distances (involves temperatures) we're making our Earth's enviroment more stable and we won't have to be dependent on the middle east.

Hydrogen production from wind electrolysis, which I will use as my benchmark, will probably be over $20/million btu. For my benchmark, I will use $24/million btu. This is about $3/kg hydrogen at the ‘wellhead’ so to speak. This is roughly equivalent to the energy content of a gallon of gasoline. There are still costs for transmitting, storing, distributing, storing and dispensing the hydrogen. The total distribution costs are certainly more than $2/million btu, but probably less than $8/million btu.

So, in large scale production hydrogen gas is at $3/kg to $4/kg. If the hydrogen is liquefied, the price increases by another $1/kg or $8/million btu. No one really knows what a liquid hydrogen infrastructure would look like or has determined its cost. Back in the early 1990’s, when I was doing a hydrogen study for NASA, liquid hydrogen produced from natural gas (with low natural gas prices) delivered by tanker truck to the Kennedy Space Center was $1.25/lb. or $2.75/kg. The cost of liquid hydrogen delivered by barge to NASA’s Marshall Facility was $.90/lb or about $2/kg.

I do not know what those cost are today. However, at that time, I estimated the cost of liquefaction at about $8/million btu in bulk, and don’t believe that cost of the liquefaction process has changed a great deal. The point to keep in mind with a fuel cell powered car is that you need half as much energy in the hydrogen stored on-board as is needed in a vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine operating on gasoline.

Treating a kg as the approximate equivalent in energy content to a gallon of gasoline, one can afford to pay twice as much for a kg of hydrogen as for a gallon of gasoline.

For hydrogen to compete with gasoline on price, the measure that matters is the cost of a fill-up for a light duty vehicle to go 400 miles plus or minus 10%.

To go that distance in a light duty vehicle, requires let us say 16 gallons of gasoline. This should only take the equivalent of 6 kg of hydrogen in an efficient fuel cell vehicle. However, let’s assume hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is twice as efficient and requires 8 kg of hydrogen stored on-board the vehicle.

Therefore the hydrogen can cost twice as much as gasoline to break-even. At $2/gallon for gasoline, hydrogen’s break-even cost is $4/kg. At $4/gallon for gasoline, hydrogen’s break-even cost is $8/kg. Remember without infrastructure renewable hydrogen is $3/kg at the ‘well head’. Delivered to the vehicle, compressed hydrogen gas is less than $5/kg. In other words, $3/gallon gasoline is more expensive per fill-up than renewable produced compressed hydrogen gas.

I can also argue with some confidence that $5/gallon gasoline is likely to be more expensive per fill-up than renewably produced and liquefied hydrogen delivered to the vehicle. It may be that $4/gallon gasoline is near the break-even for renewably produced liquefied hydrogen in a fuel cell vehicle. Gasoline price at the pump contains significant state and local taxes which would have to be subtracted from the pump price for a fair comparison.

However, the U.S. is not close to summer and the average price of gasoline is about $2/gallon with taxes in the Western United States. It is possible that the price of gasoline will top $2/gallon this summer after removing state and federal taxes. Increased demand for gasoline from Asia will only increase price pressure over the next decade and drive prices up to the levels that I am discussing in this article.

http://www.hydrogenassociation.org/newsletter/ad92h2future.asp