Hydrogen From Sewage to Power Fuel-Cell Vehicles

Sanitation facility will extract hydrogen from methane gas in sewage tanks.

Some Southern California drivers may be able to tool around in "poop-powered" vehicles as early as next year, according to a Bloomberg report.

The motorists would have to be among those driving the limited number of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that automakers including General Motors Corp. and Honda Motor Co. are beginning to make available.

Those who've got one will be able to fill up at a sewage treatment facility run by the Orange County Sanitation District, which plans to turn the inflow of excrement and other waste into hydrogen for electric vehicles that run on fuel-cell systems.

"Poop is actually a relatively minor portion of the material coming down the pipes,'' said Ed Torres, the district's director of technical services. "It's mostly food wastes and other organic materials washed down the drain, and all the paper that's flushed down the toilet."

Lots of Raw Material

Still, the program represents a sort of "Holy Grail in the search for renewable energy sources," Scott Samuelsen, director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California Irvine campus, told Bloomberg.

Sewage, he said, "is not something we're at risk of running out of.''
 
The sanitation district's program is part of a statewide effort, moving slowly lately but apparently still moving, to created a "hydrogen highway" connecting major cities in the state to facilitate travel in fuel cell vehicles, which require periodic fill-ups with hydrogen just as gasoline-burning vehicles need refills.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing for California to derive 30 percent of its energy from renewable sources, cut greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide by 60 percent, and increase the availability of fuels that don't contribute to global warming.
 
Making Electricity
 
The sanitation district's program is a form of recycling in which the methane gas produced while waste sits in holding tanks will be converted to fuel.

Today, most of the methane is filtered, then burned like natural gas for power. Surplus methane is usually sold or burned off.
 
Now the surplus methane will be converted into electricity by an experimental "generator" jointly developed by FuelCell Energy Inc., which makes pollution-free power plants, and Air Products & Chemicals Inc., the biggest U.S. supplier of industrial gases.
 
The stationary generator will use chemical catalysts to split hydrogen off the methane molecules. Most of the hydrogen will be converted to electric power and used on-site.
 
The rest will be siphoned off for use in automobiles equipped with fuel cells, which convert hydrogen gas and oxygen to electricity to power the vehicles' electric drivetrains.
 
Vehicles Already on the Road

California already has more than 100 fuel-cell cars, light trucks and buses on its roads, all in test fleets. The state's environmental policy calls for more than 2,000 of the vehicles by 2015.

General Motors has been providing a number of its crossover SUV Equinox fuel-cell electric vehicles to drivers in Southern California, Washington and New York in a 30-month program that began in late February. 

Honda plans to begin a 3-year lease program next week to make several hundred of its FCX Clarity fuel cell sedans available in three Southern California communities where hydrogen fuel stations already are available.
 
Triple Threat

The experimental generator to be used at the Orange County Sanitation District  is unique because it can produce three types of power, said Ed Kiczek, business director for hydrogen energy systems at Allentown, Penn.-based Air Products.
 
It will yield enough hydrogen for 50 fuel-cell car fill-ups a day; can make 250 kilowatts of electricity; and will produce heat form the fuel-making process that can be captured for use in the facility's climate-control system.
 
Federal and state research grants are financing the $8 million to $9 million cost of the project, Kiczek said.

Scott Doggett, Contributor

Posted by

John O'Dell June 9, 2008, 3:01 AM

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Alternative Fuels, Biofuels, Fuel Cell, General Motors, Honda, Hydrogen, Plug-ins and Electric, Recycling