FuelCellsWorks

Shanghai – The China International Industry Fair was held ceremoniously in Shanghai. With “Green SAIC, Innovation for Better Future” as the theme, SAIC Group displayed 6 models of new energy vehicles, which would serve the Expo 2010. Of those models, two made their premiere for the first time. They were inter-pavilion vehicles within the Expo Zone, i.e. the Shenchi Brand 4 seat pure electric car, and sight-seeing vehicles within the Expo Zone, i.e. the Shenchi Brand 11 seat fuel cell vehicle. They will serve the public in the Expo Zone together with the VIP service cars, i.e. Shanghai Brand fuel cell cars. As for the daily service outside the Expo Zone, the Expo extramural taxies — Buick hybrid sedans, and the Expo extramural VIP service cars — Shanghai Brand hybrid sedans, will be responsible. As is planned, SAIC Group will provide the Expo 2010 with nearly 1,000 units of new energy vehicles, including pure electric vehicles, super-capacitor vehicles, fuel cell vehicles and hybrid vehicles, so as to help the World Expo realize the green objective of “zero emission inside the Expo Zone and Low emission outside it” for the visitor transit during the Expo 2010.

SAIC takes the lead in industrializing the new energy vehicles based on the strong industrial chain

Shenchi Brand 11-seat fuel cell sight-seeing car (for service within the Expo Zone)

Of high efficiency and producing low noises, this is a new energy car of “zero emission” in the real sense for sight-seeing purposes. Using front and rear independent suspension, four-wheel disc brake, electric power steering and vacuum brake booster, the car offers excellent driveability and riding comfort. The maximum speed is 40 km/h and the continued driving mileage is up to 80 km.

Shanghai Brand fuel cell car (for VIP service inside the Expo Zone)

Shanghai Brand fuel cell car is the first electric-electric fuel cell hybrid with SAIC’s self-owned brand, and is also a new generation fuel cell hybrid vehicle independently developed by SAIC. Using the plug-in technology, with battery as the main power source (rechargeable with 220 V direct current of civil purpose) and with a small pressurized fuel cell system as auxiliary power (using hydrogen as fuel), the car can run on multi-source power. On the basis of the first generation “Shanghai Brand” plug-in fuel cell technology, the vehicle adopts modular assembly and its front cabin is a “powertrain” in the real sense. For short distance driving, the car can run on pure electricity. For long distance driving or when the battery runs out, the cart can shift to the hybrid driving mode, when the fuel cell generates electricity and produces enough electricity to drive the car while supplementing the power battery with electricity in the meantime.

UNDP fuel cell bus (for service on the Expo Avenue inside the Expo Zone)

This vehicle is specially developed for implementing the phase II project of GEF/UNDP, i.e. Demonstration Project of China’s Fuel Cell City Bus Commercialization. It adopts the advanced dual fuel cell system independently developed by China. Using the advanced ultra-low-floor structure, this model is a high-end mainstream city bus used in developed countries embodying good economy, strong power, zero emission and environmental friendliness, and indicating the trend for the development of future city bus transit.

HAMBURG – As the Copenhagen conference nears, every effort to reduce greenhouse gas counts. With that in mind, hydrogen-powered buses can be one route towards clean public transport, results presented at a conference on 17-18 November showed. “Hydrogen transport is no longer just some engineers’ dream but a working reality,” Anne Houtman, director Internal Market and Sustainability DG TREN, European Commission, told the conference.

The European Commission has co-funded the HyFLEET:CUTE Project 2006-2009, which successfully operated more than 40 hydrogen powered buses over four years in 10 cities on three continents.

A hydrogen vehicle is a vehicle that uses hydrogen as its onboard fuel for motive power using one of two methods: combustion, or electrochemical conversion in a fuel-cell. In Germany, the Berlin trial was with combustion engines (H2ICE buses operated by MAN) and the Hamburg trial was with fuel cells (H2FC buses operated by Daimler) with the industry seemingly becoming more interested in the latter because fuel cell propulsion systems have higher efficiency, Heinrich Klingenberg, managing director of hySOLUTIONS GmbH, a public-private partnership with the objective of fostering hydrogen and fuel cell applications in Hamburg, told New Europe on 17 November.

Daimler last week unveiled the first of its new generation Mercedes-Benz Citaro FuelCELL-Hybrid transit buses. Thirty of these new buses will be going into service in 2010 with the first 10 going to Hamburg where previous-generation fuel cell buses have already been in service for several years. “The HyFLEET:CUTE project itself has really proven in all these cities that the technology is very close to market viability,” Klingenberg said.

In order to tackle the world problem of CO2, original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, would have to come out with some bigger numbers of buses. But for now it is important to not only do the research work but to do the day-to-day public transport trials to prove that the technology is available and can be operated properly, Klingenberg said.

According to information at the Hamburg conference from the transport industry, manufacturers and the hydrogen production, the technology will be viable between 2015 and 2020. “Most of the homework is done. They’re very close to the market – very close. The cost has to come down and a little more experience, but we are not at an experimental stage anymore – not at all. There is a period of 20-30 years of this technology and it’s a matter of political will,” Boris Jermer of HyCologne, told New Europe. “What we need is buses which are cheap enough.” A fuel cell bus currently has a price tag of €1.5-1.4 million. “Price depends on the volume. If you produce one bus with 20 engineers it costs you a fortune. But as soon as we enter the first volumes that means 100 buses per year, then the price goes down to 600,000 which is already okay. It’s a lot of money but it’s okay,” he said.

Hydrogen fuel does not occur naturally on earth and thus is not an energy source, but is an energy carrier just like electricity. “When it comes to the question of how clean is hydrogen as a fuel certainly we have to be aware that we need hydrogen from clean resources to have it 100 percent emission free,” Klingenberg said. He explained that in the northern regions they have started to use wind energy for the production of hydrogen which then can be stored and therefore be easily available for a longer time and can be used for example for powering buses or ships. “The refueling unit with the production of hydrogen we will set up here in the city of Hamburg is the biggest one in Europe,” he said. Moreover, it makes sense to produce hydrogen from renewables rather than dirty sources.

Producing hydrogen from coal would still damage the environment, with the only advantage being that when burned it produces water and spares city residents from breathing harmful exhaust fumes.

In advance of the international climate summit in Copenhagen, Worldfocus examines the green revolution in Denmark.

Last week, we showed you how everyday Danes profit from pioneering wind power. But there’s a challenge — how to store that power when the wind isn’t blowing, or in the case of solar power, when the sun isn’t shining.

Denmark is searching for answers, including building Europe’s first “hydrogen neighborhood” — homes that are powered and heated with the help of hydrogen fuel cells. John Larson reports from Denmark.

Denmark is searching for answers, including building Europe’s first “hydrogen neighborhood” — homes that are powered and heated with the help of hydrogen fuel cells. John Larson reports from Denmark.

Polaris Venture Partners has pumped an additional $1 million in seed capital into Cambridge, MA-based solar fuel startup Sun Catalytix, bringing its total investment in the MIT spinout to $3 million, Polaris general partner and company director Bob Metcalfe tells Xconomy.

The startup, which we first covered in April, has also gained an exclusive license to patents based on discoveries made by company founder and chemist Daniel Nocera at MIT. Nocera has invented a catalyst that mimics photosynthesis to turn water and an energy source such as sunlight into renewable fuel. Sun Catalytix is at work to increase the scale at which the technology can produce fuel, Metcalfe said. The U.S. Department of Energy is also supporting the firm’s research, awarding it a $4.1 million grant through its Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program this fall.

Sun Catalytix, which garnered its first seed investment from Polaris last year, is among a growing number of companies and research groups that aim to harness the abundant energy from of the sun in the form of fuel. Cambridge, MA-based Joule Biotechnologies, formed and backed by Flagship Ventures in 2007, and Maynard, MA-based Nanoptek are part of this pack as well. It’s not been proven that any of these technologies can work at a scale and cost that is competitive with crude oil, but the promise of these technologies has motivated venture investors and the government to reach deep into their pockets to make them commercially viable.

“We’re still seed-stage,” Metcalfe says of Sun Catalytix, “which means the future is bright but uncertain.”

Metcalfe, a leader of the clean technology practice at Waltham-based Polaris, didn’t seem afraid to tell me that Sun Catalytix doesn’t have a definite plan for how it plans to bring its technology to market. The startup, which now has five employees, has been focused on building systems that can demonstrate how well the technology works with different types of water and with larger volumes of water than Nocera used in his lab at MIT. (Separate experiments have successfully demonstrated the technology using water from the Charles River and Boston Harbor, Metcalfe says, but yet another experiment that tested antifreeze as an alternative to water for using the system in freezing weather didn’t quite work.) Nocera has been a proponent of so-called “personalized energy,” with individuals using systems that incorporate technologies like his water-splitting catalyst to meet their own energy needs.

Sun Catalytix is developing several different catalysts to perform a water-splitting reaction. Nocera’s research, published last year in Science, showed that a catalyst could be used to separate oxygen from water, leaving hydrogen molecules that could be used to make hydrogen fuel. The catalyst used in that published research consisted of a metal electrode placed in water containing cobalt and phosphate. Metcalfe says that a key feature of Nocera’s catalyst is that it is self-repairing, meaning that it can repeat the water-splitting reaction over and over again.

The company is still assembling an executive team to lead its nascent operation. Amir Nashat, a general partner at Polaris, serves as founding CEO of the startup on an interim basis and shares some of the company-building duties with Metcalfe, Metcalfe says. The chairman of the company is Arthur Goldstein, the retired chairman and CEO of water purification and desalinization giant Ionics, which General Electric scooped up for $1.1 billion in 2005. The plan at Sun Catalytix is to recruit a more permanent CEO to lead the company in and also close a Series A round of venture capital that includes multiple backers. (For now, Metcalfe says, Polaris is the sole venture investor supporting the company.)

Metcalfe says that he expects the new chief executive to complete a business plan for the company. It’s likely that the company will seek corporate partnerships that would help it to integrate its technology with solar panels, wind turbines, and/or fuel cells, he says. The startup’s technology would use power from these systems to make fuels, so that people who rely on solar panels for electricity could have power when the sun isn’t shining, for example. Gaseous and liquid fuels generally pack much more energy density than batteries, which are the standard for of energy storage used with wind turbines and solar panels.