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Smart Mobility - Well-To-wheels Efficiency of Hydrogen Vehicles
Smart Mobility - Well-To-wheels Efficiency of Hydrogen Vehicles
Smart Mobility - Well-To-wheels Efficiency of Hydrogen Vehicles
Properties of hydrogen
The 48% of current hydrogen production is via steam reforming of natural gas
(SR), 30% via petroleum fraction, 18% via coal gasification, and only 4% via electrolysis
due to the still high cost of production (1)
Let’s take that efficiency of electrolysis is 70% and 5% are electricity transmission
and distribution grid losses between the power plant and the electrolyzer (2)
0.7x0.95=0.665, so producing of hydrogen by electrolysis is 66.5% efficient.
0.7x0.95=0.665
Hydrogen package
0.7x0.95x0.9=0.5985
Hydrogen delivery
Hydrogen has very low volumetric energy density at standard temperatures and
pressures. Hydrogen packaging requires significant energy when hydrogen is used as
an energy carrier. We will consider only road delivery and pipeline delivery of hydrogen
from a production site to customers as the most economical ways.
A 40-ton truck can carry at 20 MPa pressure only 320 kg of hydrogen and only
288 kg are delivered. There is possible to see energy needed for the road delivery of
hydrogen and other fuels compared to their energy content, see below.
As we can see above, the efficiency of road delivery of compressed hydrogen by
a truck is approximately 88% in a distance of 200 km.
Hydrogen has very low volumetric energy density, the flow velocity must be
increased by over three times. There is needed 4.6 times more energy to move
hydrogen through the pipeline compared to natural gas (4), see below.
It is obvious that only 80% of the hydrogen fed into a pipeline in Ukraine would
arrive in Germany and only 70% to Spain. Transport of methane (natural gas) through
pipelines is 3.5 times more efficient than transport of hydrogen.
Types of hydrogen vehicles
Hydrogen can be used by fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) that use hydrogen
fuel cells to power the vehicle's electric motor or by hydrogen internal combustion
engine vehicle (HICEV) that uses an internal combustion engine.
Hydrogen internal combustion engines have only 20-25% efficiency and low
power output compared to fossil-fueled internal combustion engines. A good example of
this is BMW Hydrogen 7. It was limited production hydrogen internal-combustion engine
vehicle built from 2005-2007 by BMW. The car was powered by a 6.0-liter V12 engine,
but it reached only 191 kW of power and its range was 201 km (5).
FCEV uses a propulsion system similar to electric vehicle, but energy stored as
hydrogen is converted to electricity by the fuel cell.
There are used Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells, they can achieve efficiency of
about 50-60%. Let suppose that a PEM fuel cell has 60% efficiency. Electric energy produced
by the fuel cell feeds a drivetrain (motor and power inverter) of 90% efficiency.
0.7x0.95x0.9x0.6x0.9=0.32319
Transmission and distribution grid losses between the power plant and charging station
are 5%. Efficiency of charging a battery is 90%. EV’s drivetrain (motor and power
inverter) has 90% efficiency.
0.95x0.9x0.9=0.7895
Overall vell-to-wheels efficiency of BEV is 79%. You can see overall well-to-wheels
efficiency of BEV in the picture below.
BEV has roughly 2.5x better well-to-wheels efficiency than FCEV when it is filled up with
“in situ” produced hydrogen. When hydrogen has to be transported by a road delivery or
trough hydrogen pipeline, well-to-wheels efficiency will worsen even more.
1,https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0375/10/1/10/pdf
2, https://www.urso.gov.sk/data/att/c63/342.6c2274.pdf
3,https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/9013_energy_requirements_for_hydrogen_gas_compr
ession.pdf
4, https://afdc.energy.gov/files/pdfs/hyd_economy_bossel_eliasson.pdf
5, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7