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filling stations currently under con- struction will meet this criterion. The Golden State has 19 filling sta- tions under development, and anoth- er 28 have just received funding from the federal government. All of them must by law produce at least 33 per- cent of their hydrogen from renew- able sources (solar or wind).
Reducing Carbon Footprint The entire idea behind using
hydrogen fueled automobiles is to re- duce the vehicles’ carbon footprint. This is not happening for the 100,000+ electric vehicles now regis- tered in California. Sure, they’re emission-free, and they get to use the HOV (high-occupancy vehicle) lanes even when only one person is aboard. Their carbon footprint is somewhere else, usually surrounding the power plant that generates the electricity that ultimately charges the electric car’s batteries. The pure electric car also has
the problem of limited range. A typi- cal electric will run 60 to 80 miles on a charge, and then will require sever- al hours to recharge. Longer range cars, like the top-of-the-line Tesla, will go 100 miles. An all-electric car costs significantly more than today’s current crop of fuel-cell vehicles ($89,000 for the top Tesla vs. about $65,000 for a Hyundai SUV). Possibly the most important
breakthrough in lowering the cost is the development of a new graphene hybrid material as a replacement cat- alyst for platinum. Platinum has been widely used as a catalyst for oxygen reduction reactions in fuel cells for decades, but its high cost is a major obstacle to making fuel cell vehicles more affordable and more popular. Graphene, however, may be just what automotive and energy companies have been looking for. After all, fuel cells have been around for a long, long time, having been first invented by William Grove back in 1838. The guy was a lawyer and sometimes scientist. The fuel cell was a kind of a hobby for him, and we’ve been playing with fuel cells every since.
Fuel Pump Accuracy Another piece of the infrastruc-
ture puzzle has been tackled by scien- tists at NIST (National Institute of Science and Technology). NIST keeps an annual tally of the weights and measures needed for industries throughout the nation’s economy. Its Handbook 44 is like a Whole Earth Catalog for the durable and consum- able goods sold in the United States, including gasoline and now hydrogen. Fuel pumps that would dis-
pense hydrogen to fuel-cell-powered cars can, new research from NIST suggests, live up to the measurement standards U.S. regulators would re- quire. Although there are only about a thousand fuel-cell powered cars and buses operating around the world today, by next year that num- ber is projected to grow considerably. Automakers, including Toyota and Honda, , have all announced their upcoming lines of hydrogen-powered cars as soon as next year. Hyundai began leasing this year, following lease programs from Honda and Mer- cedes. And this means measuring, storing, and pumping hydrogen fuel must also become better standard- ized to join the real-world economy.
NIST Standards NIST’s Handbook 44 standards
for hydrogen mandates that filling stations selling the fuel be able to dole out the gas with at least a 2 per- cent accuracy. This translates to a hydrogen fuel pump delivering its fu- el with a high degree of accuracy. A kilogram of hydrogen contains about as much stored energy as a gallon of traditional petroleum. But hydrogen is a wily gas, with
a molecular weight as light as mole- cules come. It’ll sneak out of seams, crimps and joints like nearly no oth- er gas, save perhaps for helium. Leaks can be tricky to catch, as well as possibly dangerous. Moreover, can a fuel pump really deliver the hydro- gen fuel it says it’s delivering with a 2 percent accuracy or better? Accord- ing to recent research by NIST scien- tists, the answer is “yes”. Hydrogen stations, for the most
part, are dispensers added to exist- ing gasoline stations. Customers are used to the convenience, safety and services of retail gas stations and it makes sense to add hydrogen to what already exists. In some cases, though, hydrogen stations are pur- posefully built to dispense only hy- drogen. When it comes to storing and dispensing fuel, hydrogen is more like natural gas than gasoline or diesel. Like CNG, hydrogen is a com- pressed gas that is stored above ground at the station. For more than 75 years, hydro-
gen has been safely handled, distrib- uted and dispensed, notwithstanding the famous Hindenburg disaster. But that was 77 years ago, and we have learned a lot since then. Building codes and technical standards are created around hydrogen’s unique properties: small molecule, lighter-than-air, quick diffusion and gaseous state. r
IPC Study Forecasts Moderate PCB Growth
Continued from page 1
PCB market in 2013. Among the business metrics shown in the report, it is a positive indicator that R&D spending projections are up substan- tially for 2014. The annual survey-based study
provides a comprehensive overview of the market and business of PCB manufacturing in North America. It contains current data and analysis covering rigid PCBs and flexible cir- cuits separately, including market size, sales trends, sales growth by product type and by vertical mar- kets, production type (high volume vs. quick-turn vs. prototype), and fi- nancial metrics including spending on R&D, labor costs, revenue per em- ployee and U.S. imports and exports. The 66-page, downloadable re-
port is available to IPC members for $450 and to nonmembers for $900. Companies that participated in the survey receive a complimentary copy of the report. For more information: Web:
www.ipc.org/PCB-Study-2014 r
December, 2014 Fuel Cell Infrastructure...
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