A few weeks ago I visited the Hydrogen Engine Center in Algona, Iowa and got to speak at length with Joe Lewis, their V.P. of sales. Joe is a knowledgeable, hands on guy with a marine engine background who is just as comfortable putting his hands on one of the Ford 300-6 engines they refurbish as their bread and butter business as he is talking about the long term strategic implications of hydrogen and ammonia as fuels. He filled us in on all the good things that are happening over there so we could bring the news to you.
The Hydrogen Engine Center occupies two large buildings on the east side of Algona. One building is purely storage but the other houses their assembly, testing, and shipping areas, seen below:
You would think with a name like Hydrogen Engine Center that there would be men in white coats around tiny bench top prototypes but these guys are all business. They know the Ford 300-6 platform inside and out. This engine was produced from 1963 to 1996 and is pretty much the drive train of choice for airport ground equipment when coupled with the Ford C6 transmission. The 44,000 engines Ford banked in 1996 when they stopped production have been consumed and there is steady work rebuilding them, which is where the HEC makes most of its money.
They know gasoline and diesel are eventually going to become very dear, hence the "Hydrogen" in their name. If a liquid or gas can be burned these guys know how to get it into the cylinders of an inline six cylinder and make it perform. The two best sources of hydrogen are hydrogen itself and ... ammonia. The little white nurse tank on the right has more hydrogen in it than the big orange hydrogen tanker on the left. Iowa has 800 ammonia filling stations already, its the nexus of the nation's 3,100 mile ammonia pipeline network, and all of our farmers are already trained to handle it properly - its the perfect renewable farm fuel if you've got plenty of stranded wind to feed the production process.
Handling hydrogen is a bit sticky. You can't smell it if it leaks and its quite explosive. HEC has completed the world's only hydrogen safe dynamometer room, which looks rather like the inside of a Lutheran church here in Iowa. Hydrogen rises very rapidly in the atmosphere, so the high ceiling gets it above any equipment that might generate a spark. Once a little hydrogen accumulates in the area of the peak sensors detect it, open vents, and pressurize the building, rapidly exhausting the leak and automatically shutting down anything in the room to prevent an explosion.
We happened to time my visit just right - here is Joe standing next to one of their Oxx Power Ford 300-6 type engines set up for ammonia and undergoing durability testing. This isn't some theoretical thing that might get done next year - if you have an ammonia source and a need to power a backup generator you can buy one of these units today and have it delivered on a pallet in a couple of weeks.
HEC knew it had to hit the ground running with products it could sell today but they are constantly incrementally improving the inline six cylinder platform they know so well. Here we see a prototype of a more efficient hydrogen engine than the refitted 4.98L six cylinder gasoline engine. Hydrogen burns much faster than gasoline and will make its best power in a 23L three cylinder built to fit in the same mounts. This is an early mock up and notice the laminated cylinder construction. This means that they can certify the engine once for emissions and then build different displacements based on cylinder height, greatly reducing their overall R&D cost.
We're glad to see this work is being done and doubly glad that its happening only sixty miles from the Iowa Lakes Community College campus. There have already been discussions on how HEC's technology can be integrated into the mechanics program the college offers and we're sure this will progress in 2008.
I hope we can do more stories on their projects, including the four-engine generator gang they have shipped in Canada for a wind project. People who are interested in farm-scale wind and solar projects where they can buffer the power to the grid and to the farm would gain many advantages in negotiating their PPAs as they develop their plans if or when system is economic at the farm scale.
Buffering the power through a generator set and/or a flow battery system would allow farms to enter into PPAs where they could respond to a 24-hour lead time from the utility, could sell power when the utility needs it most (and at better prices if the utility offers that option) and be able to keep the farm power needs off-grid through slack production periods. By combining biogas, solar and wind systems, the probability of slack production periods decreases and of surplus production periods increases. Designing the systems to take advantage of these factors to minimize grid consumption and maximize grid injection on-demand when the utility could use it best, even on smaller distribution lines, could give farm-scale projects many advantages financially.
From the little information I have been able to glean from press releases, the four-engine gang allows maximum up-time since one engine can be down for maintenance, and the same system could be used for biogas, ammonia or hydrogen consumption. This kind of system could allow us to simulate and apply optimization models to proposed projects with more options so more farms could find solutions which are economically viable.
VRB Power Systems in Vancouver has shipped vanadium redox batteries for wind systems, and expects to have subsystems available this year. These systems would allow multiple power generation sources to interface with the farm system and with the grid, perform dc-dc and ac-dc conversion and handle other control tasks which would greatly increase the strategies a farmer could employ to maximize their resources and profit. Combined with HEC's generators, each farm location could optimize their grid interface even more precisely and potentially enable more farms to be viable projects.
In developing forecasting models for various scenarios, the best ones from a business perspective are where we can provide stable, three-phase AC on the farm and continuous grid feeds at a set power level, or power levels which vary according to the utility's optimum needs during the day and by season. This kind of dependability would help farmers and utilities mutually plan for optimal cooperation and contingencies. It would, I imagine, make the utilities much more enthusiastic about adding these resources to the grid. Combined with services by companies like Grid Point's Smart Grid using computer controls to synchronize grid input points from the utility's control room would help move farm generation, in the mind of utilities, from a potential source of problems to a reliable and predictable source point, especially once farm outputs reach 10% of more of the power on a utility's lines (the point at which "random" sources on a line can create non-linear control problems -- the main distributed generation problem we need utilities to solve and we need to help them solve if at all possible).
Flow batteries are also being tested for, and marketed to, utilities to handle weak grid sectors, level power peaks and other tasks, so as this technology emerges in rural areas, electric coops could become interested in solving the distributed grid problem if they could obtain funding for research and capital expenditures from government sources. When we look at network flow problems over such large numbers of nodes, the more we can divide the problem into solvable subproblems, the better our models can anticipate reality. We could also allow utilities to think about underground cables in subgrids in areas less than 40km (the scale at which reactive power control problems become nonlinear for underground cables), which the Midwest's natural township scale is well under and could become a prime organization unit for subgrid control systems in the new grid paradigm.
Underground collection lines to flow-battery substations from farm systems would allow utilities to seperate inflows from outflows, further simplifying the network flow problem mathematically (and, therefore, in computerized control systems). By decoupling the purchase of power from the same lines distributing power, and allowing utilities to use flow batteries for both peak leveling and power purchases, the REA could be given a new mandate and productive funding to redesign the infrastructure in rural areas and create stable power systems surrounding urban areas in which peak demand in those areas, and for manufacturers, could be met with stored power resources fed by asynchronous purchases to keep the substation batteries "topped off" without depending on any one producer.
Anyway, a future article on this specific HEC system, and any details about its costs and operating characteristics, would be a great addition to our knowledge base.
EERE Network News, Jan 16, 2008
GM's latest incarnation of its "E-Flex" propulsion system?the one initially designed for the Chevrolet Volt?is a fuel-cell-powered crossover vehicle carrying the Cadillac badge.
The Cadillac Provoq concept vehicle was unveiled last week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, and is also on display at the Detroit Auto Show.
The vehicle achieves a 300-mile range by packing two high-pressure hydrogen storage tanks beneath its rear cargo floor. It combines an 88-kilowatt fuel cell with a 60-kilowatt lithium-ion battery pack that can store up to 9 kilowatt-hours of electrical energy. It features a 70-kilowatt coaxial motor drive system for the front wheels and a 40-kilowatt motor in each of the rear wheel hubs, providing enough kick to boost the vehicle to 60 miles per hour in about 8.5 seconds. The vehicle has a top speed of 100 miles per hour.
Additional features built into the Cadillac Provoq include a solar panel integrated into its roof, brake-by-wire technology, and front grill louvers that close at highway speeds to enhance the vehicle's aerodynamics. See the GM press release http://media.gm.com/us/gm/en/news/events/autoshows/08naias/brands/cadill..., and a selection of photos of the Cadillac Provoq http://gm.wieck.com/forms/gm/*query?conprovoq&source=all
Google returns >400.000 hits for subject text string, so I was wondering if that room has any detectors in the room ?
Maybe set up to signal a control circuit to shut down operations ?
The H2 detectors are high above in the vent space. That is roughly 36' off the ground ... and hydrogen rises at 36' per second at room temperature. I'll ask them to demonstrated next time I am there and post the video on our YouTube account.