Hydrogen Bus in Iceland

[NigelWaring]

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y223/NigelWaring/Iceland/01-09HydrogenBus.jpg

Another extract from one of my Travel Blogs. Here we have a green bus, it’s powered by hydrogen and at the time there were only six of them. Just before we left Australia they were mentioned in TV documentary. The Icelandic Government admits that even with the low cost of energy in Iceland it costs more to run a bus on hydrogen than anything else but they have to start somewhere, they now have quite a start on the rest of the world with this technology.

Their long term plan was to build a series of hydrogen filling stations along the ring road that runs around the island, these would probably be incorporated in existing petrol stations. It is possible that their plans may have been affected by the current state of the economy. We should be giving them all the support and encouragement that we can, what they are doing will eventually help the world.

A major problem at the moment is storage of the hydrogen, in a liquid form it has to be kept very cold and a single fill of the huge tanks will not run the bus all day. Other groups around the world are addressing this problem, one that I heard about in a science podcast was an investigation into storing hydrogen by combining it with a crystalline substance. I didn't really understand the physics of it but the total volume would be only 30% of the original hydrogen and it can be kept at normal ambient temperatures and pressures.

I see a problem that has never been mentioned with the use of hydrogen, the exhaust would be pure water vapour which is generally harmless. What would happen if many vehicles were generating this water vapour in congested areas, everything would get very wet. Perhaps it may be necessary for hydrogen powered vehicles or any other devices to retain there exhaust water for recycling. Water vapour is supposed to be one of the more dangerous of the greenhouse gases.

[Cozza]

The Western Australia State Government also ran the trial along with several other countries for the use of Hydrogen Fuel cell buses.

A global trial of hydrogen
The initial two-year EcoBus trial was run in collaboration with ‘sister’ trials in nine European cities plus Reykjavik and Beijing. The nine European cities participated in the Clean Urban Transport for Europe (CUTE) project while Reykjavik’s trial in Iceland was part of their Ecological Cities Transport Systems (ECTOS) project. In order to maximise community and industry access to the Perth EcoBuses and refuelling infrastructure, the trial was extended for a further twelve months until September 2007. The third year extension was run in association with the European HyFLEET:CUTE program.

This was run by the Department for Planning and Infrastructure (http://www.dpi.wa.gov.au/greentransport/19524.asp).

I was quite sad when I heard that they had stopped running the buses around Perth city, they were a nice change from the diesel guzzling ones used at the moment.

However it is not all doom and gloom, they are now primarily using Natural Gas buses which are alot cleaner than the diesel ones.

[NigelWaring]

Sadly any green system will not be successful until the big international companies can make lots of money out of it.

[Cozza]

Sadly any green system will not be successful until the big international companies can make lots of money out of it.

Not only that, but any attempt so far to introduce a non-petrol vehicle is getting flak/blocked/sabotaged by the Oil and Fuel companies.

There was a trial of a fully electric car a few years ago and the big oil and fuel companies sabotaged that too. A documentary was created about the whole fiasco, Who Killed The Electric Car? (http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com/)

Currently in wide DVD release, Paine’s film investigates the events leading to the quiet destruction of thousands of new, radically efficient electric vehicles. Through interviews and narrative, the film paints a picture of an industrial culture whose aversion to change and reliance on oil may be deeper then its ability to embrace ready solutions.

It is a sad realisation that the world runs on money, and is governed by the fat cat executives.

IMHO I would prefer if the world reverted a barter system, you do this for me and I will do that for you. Money complicates things and is preventing a majority of people from doing anything "Green" that threatens to reduce the profits of the big corporations.

[Soylent Green]

Don't Perth run the City Cats that are LPG Powered?
I think for this country LPG is more viable option than Hydrogen , we already have the fuel points and have a plentiful supply.

[Cozza]

Don't Perth run the City Cats that are LPG Powered?
I think for this country LPG is more viable option than Hydrogen , we already have the fuel points and have a plentiful supply.

Yes they do, I mentioned it on the above post:

However it is not all doom and gloom, they are now primarily using Natural Gas buses which are alot cleaner than the diesel ones

They run on Natural gas not LPG which means it is cleaner. All the current CAT buses run on Natural Gas, however most of the other normal route buses are still on diesel.

[Soylent Green]

Yes unfortunatly its seems its a bit of a showcase for the city block while the suburbs get the diesel monsters

[NigelWaring]

Perhaps a combination of hydrogen and solar might work. Cover the roof of the bus with panels and most of the daytime in WA there would be enough sunlight, the hydrogen or whatever would be for night-time and a backup when cloudy.

[Cozza]

Unfortunately I dont think that would work on the Mercede's buses and they are fully air conditioned. With the constant opening and closing of the doors and the start stopping I dont think a fully electric bus would work.

However, if they used the solar panels for running the electrics of the bus (A/C, lighting, signage, indicators etc) then the motor would be under less stress, therefore use less diesel and produce less carbon emmissions.

You could also do it with the Hydrogen/Solar combo, use less Hydrogen to power the engine meaning less is used which equates to more milage out of the initial tank.

[NigelWaring]

Yes, I think any future green projects will need to use a combination of everything that is available. We do need air-conditioning and when global warming really kicks in we would need it even more, regardless of whether it is in a vehicle, a building or anywhere else we perhaps need a new kind of technology.

How about a combination of solar electricity and direct solar heating which for some parts of the process would be more efficient than making the electricity first. I was thinking along the lines of bush refrigerators where you use kerosene to generate heat which drives the cooling mechanism. Generally we'd mainly need air-con when the sun is shining, the brighter it is the more cooling would be available.

The average bus roof should hold enough panels to generate 20 KW of electricity. There is also a new type of glass which diverts anything from 20% to 80% of the light passing through it to the edges of the panel where voltaic cells are used to convert the light to electricity, most bus and train windows are tinted anyway so could afford to lose up to 40% of the light.

All the new technologies would be very expensive to start but eventually economies of scale would reduce the cost of the more successful ones. We need a lot of investment in these new technologies, many will fail but a few will be so good that they will offset the cost of the failures. If only James Watt had converted his steam power to electricity then Benz or whoever would not have modified a steam engine to burn fossil fuels, we'd now have incredibly clean and cheap means of generating power for just about everything that we need. Every day about 100 times as much energy as we use arrives from the sun, it will die out one day well after we've all gone but meanwhile we really should be looking at some way of capturing it.