Below is the text version of the webinar titled "2014 and 2015 Hydrogen Student Design Contests," originally presented on November 6, 2014. In addition to this text version of the audio, you can access the presentation slides.
Alli Aman:
—before I turn it over to today's speakers. First, I want to thank you for joining. Today's webinar is being recorded, so a recording, along with presentation slides, will be posted to our website in about 10 business days. We will send an email out once those have posted to our website as well, but feel free to check back.
Everyone is on mute, so please submit your questions via the question function, and we will cover those during the Q&A at the end of the presentation. Since we do have multiple speakers today, I encourage you to indicate who your question is for when you're submitting them, so then there's no guessing game.
Also, we do host webinars monthly, and sometimes we have two a month, so I encourage you to check back to our website for future webinars and different topics that we have. I also encourage you all to sign up for our monthly newsletter, which we do send out at the beginning of each month.
So on that note, I'm going to turn it over to Erika Sutherland. Erika is a technology development manager for the Fuel Cell Technologies Office, responsible for hydrogen delivery activities. Erika?
Erika Sutherland:
Thank you, Alli. We're happy to present this webinar today on the Hydrogen Student Design Contest, and I'd like to introduce Emanuel Wagner. He is the contest manager for the Hydrogen Education Foundation. As contest manager, he develops the contest themes, raises sponsorship, facilitates the contest, and is the prime point person for the student teams. He also manages the HEF outreach activities for the Department of Energy's $1 million H-Prize, which launched just last week.
Employed by the Washington, D.C. association management company Technology Transition Corporation since 2009, Emanuel is also engaged in the industry trade association's California Hydrogen Business Council as the associate director, as well as the Biomass Thermal Energy Council as program manager. Emanuel?
Emanuel Wagner:
Hey, Erika. Thank you so much. Alli, if you actually want to advance the slides.
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First of all, I would like to thank the Department of Energy's Fuel Cell Technologies Office and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory for their support of the contest and for hosting this webinar. Their help over the years has really been essential to the success of this contest. So next slide.
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The Hydrogen Student Design Contest is one of several projects of the Hydrogen Education Foundation, or HEF for short. The HEF is a charitable nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., and dedicated to promoting clean hydrogen technologies through innovative national competitions, national hydrogen and fuel cell events, and educational programs to encourage environmental stewardship, to help improve energy security, and to create green jobs.
Now two key activities of the HEF are the Hydrogen Student Design Contest, which I'll cover in a moment, and the H2 Refuel H-Prize. So the H-Prize, as we've just heard, was launched last week, and it's a $1 million competition to design, build, and test a small scale hydrogen refueling system. In essence, the contestants from around the United States are challenged to help create a system that provides early adopters of hydrogen vehicles an affordable fueling station for their home or community. If that sounds something—if that sounds like a challenge that you would like to take on, check out the H-Prize website at HydrogenPrize.org.
And if you want to learn more about what else the HEF is doing, or our current programs, check out HydrogenEducationFoundation.org. If you want to receive timely updates on hydrogen developments around the world or on HEF's activities like the contest, consider liking the foundation on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter at @h2andyou. So next slide.
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So let's talk about the contest. It's an annual competition for undergraduate and graduate students from around the world, supported by DOE's Fuel Cell Technologies Office and NREL. And the contest challenges student teams to plan and design hydrogen energy applications for real world use. For the most part, the competition has a strong technical focus, but it does include interdisciplinary sections such as business, economics, political science, chemistry, and others. Next slide, please.
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So the first contest was launched in 2004, and since then, it has received support and funding from government institutions and private entities. Past themes include designing residential fueling systems, hydrogen communities, commercial-size stationary fuel cells. Actually, the 2005 winning design for a fueling station was built at the Schatz Energy Research Center at Humboldt State University, and it was partly financed by Chevron, and has recently been upgraded to allow for 700 bar fueling, so if you're ever in the area, do check it out.
Contest participants come from around the world, and the number of teams participating range from a dozen to more than 50. Students choose to participate because there are a few benefits in doing so. For example, the winning team or teams receive a travel stipend and a conference registration to a major industry conference where they may present their design at a session to industry attendees. They can also publicize their entries in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, which is a major hydrogen energy publication used by engineers and researchers.
Other prizes can develop during the contest. For example, this webinar, and we try to develop opportunities to highlight the participants wherever possible.
Of course, a key reason to participate is also getting a hands-on experience with developing a design or a plan which is reviewed by industry experts, and for the students, it's a great way to get in front of industry representatives, to get their name out and to have some face time with potential employers. Next slide.
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So the—last year's contest received generous support from the government agencies, like DOE's Fuel Cell Technologies Office and NREL, and it also received in kind support from the International Association for Hydrogen Energy, the CCAT, the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology, Fuel Cells 2000, and the Northeast Electrochemical Energy Storage Cluster. So thank you all to those organizations.
Now let's get into last year's theme. It was—on the next slide.
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It was the development of a hydrogen drop-in fueling station. Why was it picked? Well, really because one of the key issues in infrastructure build-out is to know where to put stations for the vehicle owners to refuel their car, and currently, there's a lot of analysis that is being done to make sure the early adopters of the vehicles have a convenient access to refueling stations. But of course, there's really no guarantees. So for—one approach is to avoid that early drivers will be limited by range by the lack of infrastructure by developing such drop-in fueling stations that allow greater range in areas of low penetration.
So on the next slide, we'll see what drop-in means.
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It's that stations should be easily transportable to another location once demand in the area is large enough to justify an investment in a stationary fueling station. So furthermore, they should have comparatively inexpensive cost to build and to be built in great numbers, and require low maintenance and easy permitting.
And finally, this goes for all of our contests, it's not an R&D contest, so all the components in the design have to be commercially available. Next slide.
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So the 2014 contest had seven sections which needed all to be addressed in detail. The most important section is up front, of course, the design of the station. It was supposed to provide 100 kilograms of hydrogen per day and be able to refill at about at least six cars per hour. The system had to either produce the fuel on site or to get the hydrogen delivered and then compress it, store it, and dispense it. It had to refuel vehicles at 700 bar and do so from empty to full in about 5 minutes.
The station had to be affordable, requiring a standardization of components to allow for mass production, and thus economics of scale to kick in. Currently stations are fairly expensive and mostly custom designed, although recently that has been changing.
Beyond the design components and requirements, teams needed to develop a cost and economic analysis which includes capital cost, operating cost, information about maintenance cost, and an estimate for the market price for the 5th, 100th, and 500th station. There's also a safety analysis, which needed to show ways to mitigate risks and list applicable codes and standards, and sections on operation and maintenance, an environmental analysis, and customer education and interface design. Next slide.
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So in total, we had 12 teams that participated in the contest, from seven countries around the world, and here you see the top five teams. And all the designs are available for download at the contest website under the 2014 contest section. So check out HydrogenContest.org. Next slide.
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And now I'm very excited to hand it over to the grand prize winning team from Washington State University, which will show you their design on their own slides. So Ian and Jake, take it away.
Ian Richardson:
Thank you, Emanuel. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today as we discuss our design for a drop-in hydrogen fueling station.
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I'm Ian Richardson, and also presenting the design with me today is Jake Fisher. We were the primary leaders of the Washington State University student team that won the 2014 Hydrogen Student Design Contest, and we were also the lead designers of the mechanical system. Both of our emails have been provided below our names. If you think of any questions after the webinar, please feel free to send us an email. We have also put a link to the contest webpage at the bottom of the slide where you can find the full report. Next slide, please.
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When designing a brand new station like this, you really need to consider the customers' concerns. In our situation, the customers are gasoline station owners. That's the most logical place to put these hydrogen stations for an initial rollout. From a gas station owner's perspective, stations need to have a low capital cost, especially because the demand is still uncertain, and it needs to have virtually no maintenance, so an owner doesn't have to pay a technician to come out to inspect and service the station.
Besides maintenance and the initial cost, the regular operating costs also need to be minimized. This includes minimizing the cooling water demand and using 208 volt or lower power. These things will keep your monthly costs down and also increase the number of potential site locations.
Since the station will initially be in urban areas where space is a premium, they need to have the smallest possible footprint, so owners aren't losing parking spaces for other customers. Obviously, these stations need to be safe and meet all applicable regulations, but they also need to be visually appealing and catch people's attention. If hydrogen is going to be the fuel of the future, these fueling stations need to portray that. So with that, I'm going to pass it off to Jake.
Jake Fisher:
Next slide, please.
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The paramount decision in our design was the choice of liquid hydrogen delivery to replenish our fueling station, so that's where I'd like to begin. We compared on-site electrolysis, on-site methane reforming, gaseous delivery, and liquid delivery based on operating costs, capital costs, transportability, and public impacts associated with these technologies as they exist today.
We found that our estimates matched conclusions made in a 2013 NREL report that liquid hydrogen delivery has the lowest capital cost for near term mass deployment of 100 kilogram per day stations. We also found that liquid hydrogen is available in most metropolitan areas. In fact, it makes up 80 to 90 percent of all non-pipeline hydrogen deliveries. So a well-established infrastructure is already in place to supply our hydrogen stations. Next slide, please.
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So now that I've identified how we plan to get hydrogen to the station, I would like to talk about how we designed the station around liquid hydrogen. These are some of the special considerations for a transportable fuel station that uses liquid hydrogen storage, different than what you'd see for a permanent hydrogen station design. The details of the safety system, design for transport, the liquid hydrogen storage tank, and how the station uses hydrogen boil-off are in the contest report, so I won't go into those details here.
What I want to highlight is the thermal compression and how we incorporate it into the design. Thermal compression is the process of using the large temperature difference between liquid hydrogen and the environment to do work. Liquid hydrogen can be converted to extreme high pressure gas in a composite cylinder by allowing it to absorb energy from the environment around it. Next slide, please.
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The best way to explain how thermal compression is used and how the station operates in general is to walk through a simulated fill-up of a vehicle. So say a fuel cell electric vehicle comes to the station with a 25 percent charge of hydrogen in the vehicle tank. The customer connects the dispensing nozzle to the car receptacle. Next animation, please
First, hydrogen is dispensed from a medium pressure bank of cylinders, bringing the vehicle tank to 75 percent. Next animation, please. After that, hydrogen is dispensed from a single high pressure cylinder, bringing the vehicle tank to 100 percent state of charge. Since the medium and high pressure cylinders are stored in a cooling bath held at negative 40 degrees Celsius, dispensing only lasts three minutes, making the customer happy. After the fill-up, the station must recharge the medium and high pressure cylinders for the next customer. This is where the station design stands apart from other designs and shows the cost savings. Next animation, please.
A valve between the high pressure and medium pressure cylinders is opened, partially depleting the high pressure cylinder and partially recharging the medium pressure cylinders. Next animation, please. The compressor turns on and pumps nearly all the remaining hydrogen from the high pressure cylinder to the medium pressure cylinders. This brings the medium pressure bank back to a full charge in the ideal case. The heat added by compression is dissipated in the bath, cooling the hydrogen to negative 40 C, and the medium pressure bank is ready to dispense again. Thermal compression is then employed to recharge the high pressure cylinder. Next animation, please.
Liquid hydrogen is pressure-fed into the cylinder from a bulk storage tank. The liquid hydrogen is then sealed off and boiled to create a vapor at a pressure of 17,000 psi. By using thermal compression, the station can operate with a $60,000, 6,000 psi compressor, instead of a $100,000, 12,000 psi compressor. It also reduces the operational costs by using energy from the environment to boil and pressurize the hydrogen, instead of electricity to run a compressor.
Additional research on the liquid hydrogen filling process for the high pressure cylinder would help to optimize thermal compression, but is not needed for the design to work today. At this point, the station is ready to dispense. Next animation, please.
Boil-off vapors from the bulk storage tank and those created from the liquid transfer process will be compressed and stored in a low pressure cylinder. Next animation, please. The low pressure cylinder provides hydrogen for the dispensing cycle, if needed, and the fuel cell that generates electricity to power monitoring and safety systems in the event of a power grid failure. Next animation, please.
So that is how the station is designed to operate. Now we'll look at some other features. Next slide, please.
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This is the remote operator interface, designed by team members Simon Guo and Sayonsom Chanda. The stations are designed to operate autonomously, but for safety and reliability, a remote operator will monitor each station using the interface shown here. To the left side is the system diagram for the operator's reference. The right side shows sensor readings from the station in real time. So under temperatures and pressures as well as valve statuses will tell the operator that the system is working, and alert them if conditions exceed design limits or valves are operating out of sequence.
If there is an issue with any of the components, such as an overheated tank, a warning message will appear here, showing red, and alert the operator to check the system and take appropriate action. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
Here, again, the station is designed to operate autonomously, but interacting with customers via standard touch screen tablet computer. The customer interface was designed by team member Patrick Frome. Similar to a gasoline station, the user will select the method of payment and a brief instruction on the nozzle operation will appear. The customer will be able to instantaneously monitor the fuel level and cost of the interaction. If at any time the customer has a question or is concerned about the system safety, the information tab allows for a live video chat with a remote operator, and has the option of activating emergency shutdown procedures. Next slide, please.
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This system has been designed to be as safe as practically possible. Each tank is fitted with a pressure relief valve to ensure they do not over-pressurize. The trailer is ventilated with industrial fans to prevent any appreciable concentration of hydrogen within the container. The system will be continuously monitored in real time by remote operators, and fuel cells provide power to emergency and monitoring systems in the event of main grid power failure.
The container is outfitted with state of the art fire suppression and emergency warning systems to alert the public, local authorities, and the remote operators in the event of an emergency. If all other systems fail, the container is outfitted with an explosion relief panel to direct any explosion in a safe direction away from people and property. Next slide, please.
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Part of this contest was to find an actual location for the station and determine the necessary permits and regulations that would need to be followed. Mikko McFeely and Brian Beleau were the two primary members that worked on the siting and permitting. For simplicity, they sited our station on the Washington State University campus in the same parking lot as the motor pool gasoline pumps. This design meets all the applicable national fire codes and regulations for the selected site.
If you look at the station footprint at the bottom of the slide, you can see the component layout and the 40-foot shipping container. The station is enclosed in an ISO 40 container, so it can easily be transported and relocated with the changing demand. All the mechanical and electrical components are located at one end of the trailer, away from the hydrogen, to further increase the station's safety. The steel container walls are also lined with two-hour fire resistant panels to reduce the setback distances required in the NFPA codes. By reducing those setback distances, we increase the number of possible site locations and make it more appealing to the customers. Next slide, please.
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The economic analysis was fairly limited for this project, given the fixed $7.00 per kilogram delivery cost and 100 kilogram per day demand, but our economists, Ben Smith and Austin Miller, took it a little farther to make it as realistic as possible. The key costs that were considered in our system are the fixed cost of $423,000, which is broken down in the pie chart, and based on quotes or company estimates, and the monthly expenses, including electrical power, cooling water, and maintenance.
Note that we have not included the cost for a remote operator or the man hours required to assemble this system. Our economists used this information to develop a fuel price model which was simplified in terms of the required rate of return of the owner and the demand for hydrogen in kilograms per month. We used this model to analyze how fuel prices varied with the changing monthly demand and required return. Next slide, please.
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With a reasonable demand, our results show that hydrogen is comparable to the cost of gasoline. In the table you can see the price per kilogram and per 5-kilogram tank, calculated with a return of 10 and 30 percent, and a monthly demand of 3,000 and 6,000 kilograms. The plot below is just a graphical representation, but it does show us that the price is much more dependent on the demand than it is on the required rate of return, and it begins to level off just above $9.00 a kilogram, as demand continues to increase.
So these results show that a station that services just 50 vehicles per day, which equates to 6,000 kilograms a month, can dispense fuel for $48.00 per 5 kilogram fuel tank, which has a range of roughly 300 miles. This is equivalent to a vehicle that gets 25 miles per gallon at a gas price of $4.00 per gallon. Next slide, please.
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Since presenting our design for the competition back in May, we have been working to get a prototype developed and funded. We have partnered with GP Strategies on a DOE proposal to develop the cryogenic thermal compressor, which is the key compression and energy-saving portion of this design. We are also redesigning a smaller single dispenser prototype station that would potentially be used on the WSU campus to fuel a new university shuttle bus, and we're also in negotiations with a couple of other companies to develop a prototype station that could be used for mass production to support the initial hydrogen vehicle rollout. Next slide, please.
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In conclusion, a hydrogen fueling station has been designed for $423,000. It uses the existing liquid hydrogen infrastructure that is well-established and already in place. This design utilizes thermal compression to reduce operating costs. The station uses state of the art emergency systems to ensure public safety as well as equipment safety. And most importantly, the system is made from entirely commercially available parts, so there's no reason the system couldn't be built today. Thank you.
[Next slide]
Emanuel Wagner:
All right. Thank you so much. Again, if you have questions right now, please type them in the questions panel on the control panel—of the control panel, on the right hand side. If you don't see it, you may need to click on the little red button to open up the panel. And we'll get to the answering of the questions at the very end of the presentations.
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And next up, we have the honorable mention team, Humboldt State University. Julian, it's your turn.
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Julian Quick:
Thank you, Emanuel. Hello, everybody. Today, we are here to present Humboldt State University's design for a drop-in hydrogen fueling station for a gaseous delivery system supply chain. Our names are—
Solomon Clark:
Solomon Clark.
Anthony Eggink:
Anthony Eggink.
Mathew Nyberg:
Matt Nyberg.
Julian Quick:
And Julian Quick. Our email address is listed in this title slide, if you have any questions after the presentation. We are happy to answer them.
This competition was a great opportunity to learn more about the hydrogen industry, and after this competition, we are all enthusiastic about the future of the hydrogen industry. Next slide, please.
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Solomon Clark:
So first up we have our design goals. When we were designing this station, we wanted to think about several objectives that we wanted to achieve in the design of our station. The first of these objectives was a modular and easily transportable design. This was so that the station can be quickly installed at several different locations. We also wanted the station to meet fast fill SAE TIR J2601 compliant standards, and this for a three to five minute fuel time, as well as customer safety.
We also wanted the design to have minimal site preparation. This is so that the station can be quickly installed at several different locations. We also wanted to incorporate comprehensive safety features. This is to protect our customers as well as to protect the reputation of the hydrogen fuel industry as a safe fuel alternative.
And in addition to this, we also wanted to incorporate only off the shelf components, and this is to demonstrate that this station could be built today. We also wanted to minimize cost to the industry and consumer, and this is to make hydrogen fuel not be a cost prohibitive fuel source. And in addition to this, we wanted to connect the California Hydrogen Highway. We live in California, and there is several hundred miles between Northern and Southern California where there are no hydrogen fueling stations, and with this low cost and highly transportable station, we are interested in being able to connect those two halves of the hydrogen highway. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
Anthony Eggink:
For the station layout, as you can see on the left side of your screen is an aerial view of what a typical installation might look like. On the far left is the consumer access point, indicated by red arrows, and that's where vehicles would drive up and be serviced by the station. Directly to the right and below the vehicle access point is the shipping container housing, and that houses all the station elements. And then our storage and delivery is on the bottom right, with a tube trailer and with multiple stalls for trailer switch-out or for an increased storage.
We also wanted to consider that not every location would be suitable for delivery. You may be near a pipeline, or you may want to produce the hydrogen on-site using an electrolyzer. So with minimal modifications, the station could be used in any of those situations. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
Julian Quick:
Gas is delivered in a compressed hydrogen tube trailer. The gas is then compressed and cooled through a cascading storage system and delivery system on an as-needed basis. The compressor necessary to raise the gas to the appropriate temperature—to the appropriate pressure for the cascade cooling system has a minimum inlet pressure of around 100 bar. In order to maximize hydrogen extraction from the tube trailer, we use a two-stage compression system with low pressure compressor and high pressure compressor.
Next, the cascade cooling system is stored to negative 10 degrees, and the gas is cooled in line from the cascade storage system to the dispenser to negative 40 degrees before it is dispensed to the hydrogen vehicle. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
Anthony Eggink:
Here you see a system schematic showing the basic flow route and compression and storage throughout the system. It starts with the two stage compression that Julian was just speaking of from the trailer, which maximizes the source use. Then it travels to a cascade storage system.
Mathew Nyberg:
Thanks, Anthony. This is Matt. So the purpose of the cascade storage system is to optimize compressor efficiency, since there's no point in compressing all the hydrogen clear up to 900 bar except when needed. So for partial fills and early parts of the fills, the lower pressure tanks would be used, and the higher pressure tanks would be exclusively for the higher pressure in the top end fills.
Also, what the cascade system allows is as the hydrogen is depleted from the lower pressure tanks and the higher pressure tanks are moved on to, the tube trailer compressor can begin to fill the lower pressure tank, so that the next car is—it's prepared for the next car when it arrives.
Anthony Eggink:
Thanks, Matt. Cooling for the system takes place in two stages. The cascade storage system is housed in a refrigerated box, basically, which is a small box inside the station that's well-insulated, and this box is maintained at a negative 10 degrees. And that allows you to cool it to negative 40 relatively easy, using a second stage for the cooling system. This would then travel to the dispenser for the fast fill dispensing, and there's also a booster compressor in the system in the event that there's any pressure differences. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
Julian Quick:
So here we have the station costs. It's broken up into several major components, which would be the cascading storage system, several compressors, the dispenser, safety equipment, and other equipment, including installation. The total cost for the station was initially estimated at just below $1 million. Since this time, we have had a more accurate price quote on the dispenser from Bennett. This brought the price down from $300,000 to $85,000, bringing the total price closer to $750,000. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
So here we have our station economics. This is where we did an analysis of if the station were to be mass produced and what the payback period of the station would be. Initially, the station cost is around $1 million, and by the time 500 stations are produced, the cost comes down to about half of that at $457,000.
On the left here, on the bottom left, you can see a graph of the net present value as compared to the year. In the middle of that graph there's a zero, so you can see that as the years increase, your profit breaks even, and then you make profit out of that.
With one station, the payback period is approximately 6 years. And with 500 stations, the payback period is approximately 4 years. The payback period of our station is highly dependent on the price of hydrogen for the consumer. On the right, you can see a graph of the price of hydrogen compared with the payback period, and we chose a price of $9.00 a kilogram of hydrogen. This is because before $9.00, the payback period sharply increases, but if the price is any higher than $9.00, it does not dramatically affect the payback period of the station.
So our objective here was to create a low cost station with a short payback period, and it does have significant mass production value, and also keeps the price low to the consumer. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
Solomon Clark:
So we wanted to be comprehensive about safety in this, as we mentioned, to protect the customers and the hydrogen industry as a safe fueling alternative. So there will be a PLC, programmable logic controller, that monitors pressure and temperature, primarily, because those are two big indicators of potential problems.
There will be a fire—waterless fire compression—suppression system that is independent of power supply. There is a hydrogen sniffer that will, upon one percent detection of hydrogen, it will initiate to the normally passive ventilation system a fan that ventilates more quickly, followed by at two percent, an audible alarm as well as sending a message to the controller.
Then so the—there will be pressure sensors to monitor pressure that will indicate both leaks, and in the case of leaks, there are isolation valves to close off the tanks from where the leaks might be. And there is also pressure relief valves for the cases of runaway compression or elevated temperatures causing higher pressures on the tanks.
There is—there will be an electrical emergency throw switch on site, as well as the ability to remotely disconnect from power. In the event that power is lost, there will be a battery backup for the PLC, the sensors, and other safety equipment. Let's see. In the event of power loss, there are normally closed valves, so that if there is no power, all valves will close. And further, in the event of a loss of communication, the entire system will shut down. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
Anthony Eggink:
So to wrap things up, we're just going to talk about our design solutions. And we broke this into two points, market solutions and technical solutions. Market solutions are important in that we need this to be available now. We have fuel cell electric vehicles rolling off the assembly lines and ready to be used today, and so in order to do that, we evaluated the best way that the industry and the consumer could enter the alternative fuel market in a cost effective manner.
And one of the ways for the industry is that this design uses the existing infrastructure, and it allows for industry that's already in production to just expand what they're doing. And the gaseous delivery allows for a low cost, and existing infrastructure is utilized.
Julian Quick:
Good points. We also wanted to highlight the technical solutions of our station. Our robust design allows for special cases. For example, maybe there's not enough space to have the tanks, the tube trailers, deliver hydrogen. In that case, an electrolyzer could be used. Or maybe there's a site where methane reformation is most appropriate, and that could just be connected to the station, instead of the compressed hydrogen trailer.
This station uses strictly off the shelf components, and we believe it could be built today. And it does meet a fast fill three to five minute fueling time by cooling the gas to sufficient temperatures and high enough pressures. Next slide, please.
[Next slide]
Anthony Eggink:
We just want to say thank you for—to everybody that helped us with this presentation. Thank you to the Hydrogen Education Foundation and the Department of Energy. We are really excited about what we've done, and we appreciate the opportunity. Emanuel?
Emanuel Wagner:
Hey, thank you guys so much.
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I want to remind attendees that you can type questions in right now, but we will wait until the end. I have been fortunate enough to meet some of those team members, some of the people that have just talked, and at the ACT Expo 2014, and it was—it was an honor to talk to them and see their designs and all the work that they've put into it. I think it really shows. And if you're—again, if you're interested in reading their entire presentation, just go to the contest website and you can download their design there. So next slide.
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I want to take the opportunity right now to transition into the 2015 contest and provide a brief preview of that. It will be launched shortly, and unlike most previous contests, the 2015 competition will have a stronger business focus. The topic will be "Development of Innovative Hydrogen Fueling Station Business and Financing Models," and we have support from the DOE's Fuel Cell Technologies Office, the—NREL, and Toyota Motor Company. But of course, we are always looking for additional industry collaboration for this very important topic.
So if you are interested, if you are in a company, if you're interested, please contact me after this webinar, or fill out the survey and indicate any interest right there. My information is also provided on the contest website.
And to provide you the backdrop for the 2015 contest theme, I'll hand that over to Erika to introduce my colleague Connor Dolan. Erika?
Erika Sutherland:
Thank you. Yes. Connor Dolan is the external affairs manager for the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association, also known as FCHEA. As the external affairs manager, Connor oversees the association's communications activities and facilitates association member programming and events planning. Connor has previously worked for the Methanol Institute and the U.S. Fuel Cell Council. Connor?
[Next slide]
Connor Dolan:
Yeah. Thank you for having me on today. I really appreciate the opportunity to provide some input, and thanks to HEF and DOE for putting this opportunity together. Can you go on to the next slide?
[Next slide]
So H2USA is a public-private collaboration co-launched by the Department of Energy and industry, whose mission is to promote the commercial introduction and widespread adoption of FCEVs, fuel cell electric vehicles, across America, through the creation of this partnership. We're working to overcome the hurdles of establishing hydrogen infrastructure.
We currently have 36 participating organizations, as you can see on this slide, including the federal government, state agencies, automakers, energy companies, fuel cell and hydrogen suppliers, nonprofits, national labs, associations, and others. As you can see, we cover the broad range of FCEV and hydrogen infrastructure supply chain.
As you may know, significant effort is currently underway in the State of California to develop hydrogen infrastructure within the state, providing up to $20 million per year through 2024 to develop at least 100 hydrogen stations. By the end of next year, there will already be 50 hydrogen stations built in California.
The large issue that H2USA is tackling is expanding that infrastructure beyond California to the rest of the United States. We recognize that not every state will be able to provide significant government funding to help jump start the development of infrastructure. That is why this contest is so important to the industry. Finding innovative station and financial solutions to advance infrastructure will be a huge step forward in enabling further development of fuel cell electric vehicles.
With Hyundai already leasing their Tucson FCEV in California today, Toyota and Honda set to launch their vehicles next year, and more automakers preparing their vehicles in the following years, the time is now to begin developing the necessary infrastructure to fuel these zero emission cars. And with that, I will kick it back to you guys. Thank you.
[Next slide]
Emanuel Wagner:
OK. Thank you, Connor. And if any of the attendees that want to see some of those cars in action are in California, feel free to sign up and attend the Fuel Cell Seminar, which is next week. There will be some cars to test drive, or just sign up for HEF and other association updates. There are ride and drives all across the country, and you can experience them first hand and get to drive one of those zero emission vehicles.
So at this time, I'm happy to discussion the sections for the soon to be launched 2015 contest. The contest will have about four sections, and the basic principle, as we've just heard, is for participating student teams to conceive a financially sound business model that will allow a hydrogen fueling station to be deployed and operated without government incentives.
In order to do so, the teams need to assess all costs and revenue streams. For example, starting with the technical station design, teams have to assess what functions and services the stations should be able to provide, what kind of revenue streams those may produce. For example, should the stations be able to produce electricity during times of low hydrogen demand but times of high electricity prices. You know, what are the costs associated with such—including such features?
As always, we encourage outside of the box thinking for these contests, and this is certainly one of them that can use that. So to better understand the challenges, teams have to create a strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat analysis, and the meat of course lies in the economic analysis, looking at innovative revenue models, managing uncertainty and risk, and as mentioned, define other applications for the use of hydrogen when there is potentially low demand.
And finally, the teams have to develop a marketing plan. So while there are several phases—while there are several phases, at the end, the top team—top teams will be invited to attend a venture forum to pitch their design to a group of investors. And in order to ensure that the teams start with the same assumptions, the Hydrogen Education Foundation will provide information on vehicle numbers, fuel, and basic station cost. So next slide.
[Next slide]
We'll have more information once the contest is officially launched, so check the website, HydrogenContest.org. And as I mentioned, sign up for our news list or subscribe to our Facebook page to receive timely information on the launch and other information.
Now finally, the proposed timeline sees a December 8 early registration deadline, and the January 16 final registration and abstract deadline, and the final business plan submission deadline of May 4. We hope that this allows the student teams to finish their plan before the weeks of finals, and the investor forum then will be about the beginning of June, and the final award ceremony after that. Next slide.
[Next slide]
So I think we're at the end of the presentations. We're ready for questions. But meanwhile, check out the contest and the H-Prize sites, like us on Facebook, make sure to take the survey at the end of the webinar, and with that, back to you, Erika.
Erika Sutherland:
Thank you. So we have a few questions that have come in. Feel free to continue to add yours. We'll start with a question for the Washington State team. The question is, does the $423,000 include equipment assembly and installation on site, or is this just the cost of the parts?
Ian Richardson:
So that $423,000 is just the cost of the components themselves. So they would be brought to a central location and assembled in a shipping container, and then trucked out to wherever the site location would be from there.
Erika Sutherland:
Thank you. Next, we have another cost-related question, and this is for the Humboldt team. The question is, are you able to provide the number of the supplier for the $85,000 dispenser?
Anthony Eggink:
Yeah. We spoke with a representative from Bennett at the ACT Expo when we were there in Long Beach in May, and that was where we got that estimate from.
Erika Sutherland:
Thank you. Another question for the Washington State team. First, they said excellent job and thank you for the effort. They'd like to know why did you opt to put all of the equipment in one container instead of two containers. Is this practical? Will there be room to do repairs on the equipment in the container?
Ian Richardson:
Well, thank you for the compliment, first off. And one of the biggest reasons that we went to a single 40-foot container was due to size restrictions. So a lot of gas stations don't have the space to put anything larger than a single 40-foot container, especially when you have to factor in the delivery to get a tanker truck in there.
So we really wanted to keep it in an ISO 40 container, so you can put it on the back of a semi truck, truck it into a location, unhook it, and then plug it into on-site electricity power, and it would be ready to go. So that 40-foot station is designed to hold 3,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen, which is right about a week's worth of hydrogen for a 100 kilogram a day demand. It is pretty cramped in the container itself, but there is room for a person to move around to get access to the valve and manifolds and the plumbing, and the other tanks. And all of the electrical machinery that is most likely to need maintenance or have issues with it is up at the front of the container, so it's easily accessed just through the regular doors.
Erika Sutherland:
Great. Thank you.
Ian Richardson:
So I hope that answers it.
Erika Sutherland:
All right. Another question, back to the Humboldt team, about the $85,000 dispenser. The question is, did that pricing require a volume purchase, and does it include metering?
Anthony Eggink:
We do not believe that it required a volume purchase. We didn't get into detail about a volume purchase at the time. But it was our understanding that it require—it did include metering. Of course, it didn't include any type of pre-cooling, because we had already designed that into our system.
Erika Sutherland:
Thank you. All right. Another question for both teams. Let's start with Washington State. When you considered the price per kilogram of hydrogen, did you consider any taxes or other highway—or fees?
Ian Richardson:
So the price of $7.00 a kilogram was actually specified in the project, or in the contest outline, and that was just to level the playing field so that it would be a constant price for all of the teams in the contest. So we didn't actually choose that.
Erika Sutherland:
Thank you. Here's another question for—how about for Alli? When will copies of this presentation be available?
Alli Aman:
Great question. We typically—give us about 10 business days. Sometimes it'll be up sooner than that. So that's why I send an email once we have those up on the website. But plan roughly 10 business days.
Erika Sutherland:
OK. Thank you. Another question for the Washington State team. In the early market, when you don't have high volume vehicle demand, how long can your station stay unused before you lose hydrogen due to boil-off?
Ian Richardson:
So the station is always losing some hydrogen due to boil-off. So when you have that liquid hydrogen in a storage tank, it's always boiling, just due to the temperature difference between the atmosphere. And the rate of that is about 0.3 percent per day. So it depends on how much volume is actually in that tank, but it could last several weeks without actually running dry, if it's full.
[Background voices]
Jake Fisher:
Recapture and storage.
Ian Richardson:
And with that boil-off, we do recapture that and store it in either the medium pressure tank or the low pressure tank, so we're not actually losing that hydrogen. We're not venting it to the atmosphere, unless we absolutely have to.
Erika Sutherland:
OK. All right. A couple more questions here. For the Washington State team, what is the timeline for follow-on work? And it looks like they're referring to developing your technologies and partnerships.
Ian Richardson:
That's a really good question. So the DOE proposal that was submitted, I think there's still a few months until we find out what is going to happen with that. As far as the relationships with private companies, they're in the process of pitching that to their venture capitalists and their investors. So we're kind of working on some redesigns and modifications to it, but we don't have a hard timeline of when they will get back to—get back to us on that.
Erika Sutherland:
OK. Returning to the question about including everything in a single container, and the practicality of it, there's another question around fitting the containers into differently-shaped gas station footprints, and also related to the potential to expand to larger liquid hydrogen storage capacity. Also about separating—I guess there's a few questions here just in general about why you chose to put everything in the container, more related to the footprint and separation between liquid, storage, and electrical.
Ian Richardson:
So I'll try to answer some of the main points, I think, and keep reminding me of the questions if I get off topic. But the footprint just—the reason it's in a standard 40-foot shipping container was just for the transportability aspect of it. So you can bring it into a location and unhook it, and it's ready to go in 24 hours. There essentially is no installation, except for plugging it into the grid power and connecting it to water, on-site water.
You can increase the storage capacity. They do make larger liquid hydrogen tanks. But it just simply wouldn't fit in a shipping container. It would have to be its own trailer that would get trucked in, similar to the Humboldt team's design, where you have a separate liquid hydrogen tank sitting next to your actual station.
Jake Fisher:
I'll add to that that these are modular, so they can—you can bring in more than one station to a site. So each station has two dispensers, and if you want to expand—say you have a higher demand, you just bring in another trailer, and now you have four dispensers.
Erika Sutherland:
Thank you.
Ian Richardson:
So is there any other part of that question that we didn't address?
Erika Sutherland:
I'll see if the person asking adds anything else and I'll let you know.
Ian Richardson:
OK.
Erika Sutherland:
Question for you on the reliability of these tanks under the cryogenic cycles that they'll be seeing. So when you're using thermal compression, the tanks are being subjected to 20 Kelvin liquid coming in, and coming up to minus 40 C in the cooling bath, correct?
Ian Richardson:
Yes, that's correct.
Erika Sutherland:
What data is there to support the tanks you've chosen in that application?
Ian Richardson:
So it is a fairly new kind of industry going into it. They use a lot of—they're type four pressure vessel tanks, but they have a composite lining and they're carbon fiber wrapped. And there's quite a bit of data for like liquid nitrogen temperatures, so if you get up around 70 or 80 Kelvin, but traditionally, there hasn't been a ton of research into liquid hydrogen applications.
Jake Fisher:
I'm pretty sure there's a report done by Lawrence Livermore that has cycled a composite tank—I think it's been several thousand times, without any structural or cracks or anything, any issues that they've seen.
Ian Richardson:
Yeah. So from what we've talked to with manufacturers, as long as you keep it within the pressure limits, it doesn't affect the fatigue life all that much, and they run it out for thousands of cycles and haven't experienced any issues yet. But as far as cycles till failure, I don't think that's well understood by the industry at this time.
Erika Sutherland:
All right. Thank you. And I saw that the person who asked the last question about footprint and the layout says that the answer is sufficient, thank you.
Ian Richardson:
OK. Thanks.
Erika Sutherland:
There are no more questions at this time, so unless—if anybody has something that comes in later, you're welcome to contact our presenters. Their email contacts are provided in the presentation. And as Alli mentioned, these will be available with the full webinar recording online in 10 business days. Alli, I'll turn it over to you to wrap up. Thank you all so much for presenting.
Alli Aman:
Yes, thank you guys so much. It's always a challenge to work with multiple schedules, so thank you for making the time available to do this, and we appreciate everyone who called in, and we encourage you to get on our website, sign up for our newsletter, and come back to future webinars. So thank you guys so much.
Emanuel Wagner:
No, thank you.