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7Hydrogen transport: safety, economy
ECONOMIC AND TECHNICAL PROBLEMS OF HYDROGEN TRANSPORT DEVELOPMENT
A. L. Dmitryev
FSUE Russian Scientific Centre of Applied Chemistry 14 Dobrolyubova pr., St. Petersburg, 197198, Russia Fax: (812) 103-01-53, e-mail: algur@yandex.ru
The automobile transport is one of the basic users of oil fuels and one of the main sources of environment pollution (up to 70% in big cities).
In order to switch over the motor road transport of a big city to an ecologically pure hydrogen fuel, thousands of tons of hydrogen per day will be needed, which is not feasible at the present time, as it would require huge energy consumption.
Therefore, for the nearest years, until cheap and practically unlimited energy sources have been found, one will not have to rely on a large-scale hydrogen use as an energy vector. The use of fuel elements with the conversion of conventional motor fuels into hydrogen cannot meet the conceptual basics of hydrogen power engineering.
Nevertheless, there is an opportunity in principal to proceed already today to a gradual mastering of hydrogen as a motor fuel. It consists of both the availability of a method permitting to reduce the hydrogen consumption per vehicle unit with the preservation of main hydrogen fuel advantages and the use of excessive capacities of big power plants for its production (NPP, TPP, HPP).
Numerous investigations show that, due to a high physical and chemical activity of hydrogen, its 5-10% additive to a hydrocarbon fuel (for example, petrol) is sufficient in order to reduce the exhaust gas toxicity by 65-75% and approach to the European standards for the exhaust gas composition (EURO-1). At that, the petrol consumption decreases by 30-40%. With the reduction of hydrogen amount per one trip up to 1-10 kg, the system of its storage onboard the vehicle gets simplified (for example, under pressure or with the use of intermet-allides), but, which is the most important, an opportunity is created to considerably expand the vehicle park with the use of hydrogen in internal combustion engines without any essential construction changes.
The use of pure hydrogen is more expedient on elec-tromobiles with an electrochemical generator on fuel elements. In this case, the necessary amount of hydrogen, with the identical vehicle mileage, will be increased and the vehicle park number will accordingly decrease by 3-4 times.
The availability of excessive capacities in electrical power engineering is connected with the problem
of necessity to unload basic power plants in rest days and holidays and in the night time as well as with reduction of the activity of many industrial enterprises. Even in the conditions of the drop of electric power consumption, the operating modes of TPP and of NPP in separate days remain in the hours of reduced loads exclusively severe. It follows from here that a considerable interest is available with a whole number of power systems in the construction of hydro-accumulating power plants (HAPP). However, by the example of Zagorskaya HAPP, one can say that the construction of such power plants requires big financial expenses and alienation of vast land territories. At the same time, it will be more rational and economically beneficial to use the power capacities for the electrolytic hydrogen production.
For example, energy losses due to dispatcher regulation at the Leningrad nuclear power plant (LNPP) equal approximately to 400 million kWh per year, and in the North-West area, due to reduction of the workload at thermal power plants, this figure increases up to 30 billion kW-h. The use of only excessive LNPP capacities will allow to generate up to 7.2-7.5 thousand tons of pure hydrogen, which is sufficient for supplying several thousand vehicle units (in the North-West area - up to 550 thousand tons of hydrogen per year). At that the cost of hydrogen (being obtained from a «plug socket») will be 25-26 roubles/kg or 0.7-0.8 roubles/kW-h as compared with the existing petrol price of 11-13 rou-bles/kW-h.
Whereas the real cost of hydrogen will essentially rise in connection with the necessity of the infrastructure establishment (electrolysers, compressors, storages, etc.). The capital expenses on hydrogen infrastructure at LNPP will take approximately 17 million dollars and will be repaid due to the petrol saving during several years and, with the account of reduction of the damage being inflicted by motor road vehicles to the city environment and to the health of population, the payback period will be even less.
The implementation of the above-mentioned projects will allow to proceed to practical mastering of hydrogen technologies, development of new science-consuming trends of activity.
ISJAEE Special issue (2003)
