Home hydrogen fueling stations hold the dream of being able to fuel up one’s hydrogen car right from one’s own home. Today, the dream is getting closer to reality as General Motors has announced that they too are developing a home hydrogen fueling station to be used with their line of hydrogen cars that they plan to start rolling out in limited quantities beginning in 2007. GM hopes to mass-market hydrogen cars by 2010 or 2011.
Home hydrogen fueling stations will help solve one aspect of the hydrogen infrastructure rollout issue. By putting hydrogen-on-demand in car owner’s garages, there will be little worry for local drivers on where to gas up their vehicles. The unit that GM is developing will work with either solar power or electricity. Similar hydrogen fueling units may also be used one day at standard commercial gasoline stations to create hydrogen-on-demand for customers with hydrogen vehicles.
Honda already offers a home hydrogen fueling station with its Home Energy Station III that they are promoting as a companion piece to their Honda FCX hydrogen car. The Home Energy Station III reforms natural gas to generate the hydrogen so it’s not as clean as an electrolysis unit.
Hydrogenics (formerly Stuart Energy) also is promoting its HomeFueler Energy Station. The HomeFueler is based on their HyStat-A Energy Station, which uses electricity to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is then used to refuel a vehicle. The HomeFueler may also be tied to wind or solar power to create clean hydrogen using renewable energy resources.
These three hydrogen home fueling stations will offer customers the convenience of refueling their vehicles from home while the rest of the hydrogen infrastructure is built so that long road trips may be taken by the same vehicles. Home hydrogen fueling stations offer a significant advancement in the hydrogen transportation industry that will revolutionize how people come to refuel their personal vehicles.
Where is the technology at today? My folks put in natural gas for a conversion
away from diesel heat to a combined heat pump/natural gas system. Chances
are, the gas lines can be extended into the garage. Another option is to
outfit the house with solar panels and a wind generator, but that appears to
be too expensive.
A possible option for the gas company is to deliver hydrogen with natural
gas and install equipment at the home to separate out the hydrogen.
A hydrogen line in the home can go to the garage and feed say a metal hydride tank. Alternatively, a stationary fuel cell can convert the hydrogen
to electricity for the home when needed or when the metal hydride tank
is full perhaps. I think that the natural gas lines can carry around
15% hydrogen.
I’ve been trying to google around to see if a hydrogen reformer that will
go into a garage area can be purchased, but I haven’t had a whole lot of
luck.
Would Honda lease the FCX Clarity to an Oregon resident if the resident
had a home hydrogen station?
The last players I’ve heard of in the home hydrogen refueling industry field that were developing such devices were ITM Power, Honda, GM, Hydrogenics and General Electric, to name a few.
One of the reasons Honda is leasing the Clarity in Sourthern California is because they have a service center build just for fixing the fuel cell cars when they break down. I doubt, without a service center, that Honda will lease to someone in Oregon right now. But, give it time as this could be in Honda’s future plans.
I do not think the high pressure tanks used by the auto producers is a good way to go. They use 5,000 to 10,000 psi of hydrogen inside the car to get long range. I use one psi to run the port injection engines I build, and that is all the system needs as far as the engine is concerned.
An explosion from the pressure alone would be a disaster with the 5,000 to 10,000 psi.
I have patented the onboard hydrogen generator engine named the “WATER FUELED ENGINE”, The patent was awarded June 9, 2009. We are now building the production prototype. With thjs hydrogen engine you need only tap water and the engine waste heat converts that water into hydrogen and oxygen for the engine. Needed electricity is provided by an exhaust turbine driving an electric generator.
For our lab work we use an electrolysis unit producing 1200 cc/min at 100 psi. We reduce that pressure to less than 1 psi to feed the engine running on our testbed.
Stone Associates, Nov. 25, 2011
Okay, just to be clear, this is “hydrogen assist technology” that you have developed. The cars run on gasoline and supplemental hydrogen (and or oxygen) is added to the intake of the vehicle. This is not the mythical “water car” that has never been proven to exist.