Hydrogen fuel hot to handle!

As India gets ready to fuel its vehicles with hydrogen ? starting with Delhi ? expectations are running high on decreasing pollution levels, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Nov 28, 2006, 03:30:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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As India gets ready to fuel its vehicles with hydrogen — starting with Delhi — expectations are running high on decreasing pollution levels. But the changes will not come overnight.

The process of converting a diesel or petrol-run car into a hydrogen-run vehicle is similar to the process of converting it into a CNG-run car. It requires installing a conversion kit, gas cylinder and adjustments in vehicle timing. But hydrogen kits and cylinders are totally different from CNG ones due to the varying characteristics of the two fuels.

Hydrogen will be available in two forms —blended with CNG up to 30 per cent or as neat hydrogen. When blended with CNG, some modifications in the existing CNG kit will be enough to run the vehicle. “It is because hydrogen and CNG have similar ignition limit,” an official said. But this will not work for neat hydrogen.

As hydrogen has three times more energy than any other hydrocarbon, vehicle performance vis-à-vis power will improve. But the cost of production of hydrogen is four times that of CNG, making it an expensive fuel. Also, hydrogen is stored in a cylinder at a higher pressure than CNG. The much lighter gas reaches the kit, which improves its density. “Improving density and keeping the cost of the kit reasonable is the technological challenge,” said an official of the Ministry of New and Renewable Sources.

Like CNG, hydrogen produces a lot of heat and requires a special supply of coolant to keep the temperature under control. Unlike other hydrocarbons that produce carbon dioxide, a hydrogen engine produces water vapour, which can be used for cooling the engine.

Hydrogen is also more efficient when used as fuel cells for running vehicles. It reacts with the oxygen inside the cells, which produces electricity to power the motor.

Hydrogen kits are manufactured in Ireland and some other countries. Only about 500 cars in the world run on neat hydrogen. Conversion costs range between $5,000 and $7,000 per car.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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