‘Hydrogen highway’ bid opens the door to emissions-free boating

The Victorian, New South Wales, and Queensland governments announced this week that they would combine to provide $20 million in funding to help develop the nation’s first renewable hydrogen refuelling station network.

While the initiative is initially aimed at the transport industry, hopes are high that the hydrogen fuel cells that produce the power needed to move vehicles will one day make the leap to other sectors including cars and boats.

Renewable hydrogen from sources such as wind and solar is widely considered an environmentally safe alternative to fossil fuels such as petrol and diesel. Electric transport is growing rapidly, but there is still a big push for hydrogen-powered trucks, cars and bikes – and even boats.

Hydrogen fuel cells create the electricity needed to power a vehicle by mixing fuel (hydrogen) and an oxidising agent, in this case, oxygen from the atmosphere. Fuel cell vehicles can be refuelled via a pump in the same way a petrol- or diesel-powered vehicle or vessel can, and usually have similar driving ranges, if not longer.

Similar to standard EVs, hydrogen fuel cells produce no emissions apart from heat and steam. Given the challenges of battery range and recharging times faced by regular EVs, there is a growing push for hydrogen as a solution to the problem of how to replace fossil fuels.

Several attempts are being made to develop fuel cell systems for boats. 

European marine engine specialist Volvo Penta has kicked off a research program looking at hydrogen as a fuel source after identifying that it is best suited to applications where range and the weight of batteries needed to provide it become a limiting factor.

Meanwhile, Japanese marine engine specialist Yanmar has launched trials of a boat powered using a Toyota-sourced hydrogen fuel cell and is now at the stage where it is looking at how to refuel the boat while it is out on the water.

Likewise, Hyundai has teamed up with Toyota to develop a marine motor it hopes one day will power commercial vessels.

Hydrogen will be the official fuel of choice for the chase boats representing nations competing in future Americas Cup showdowns.

Both Yanmar and Hyundai are using systems based on the fuel cell technology developed for the Toyota Mirai road car, the world’s first production car to tap hydrogen as a fuel source.

The ease of using the Toyota Mirai fuel cell is that it is entirely modular; increasing a system’s performance is as easy as adding more fuel cells to it.

Refuelling using hydrogen is similar to refuelling a vehicle. However, there are a few extra challenges with hydrogen, as to keep it in its liquid state it needs to be very cold and under very high pressure inside specially reinforced tanks that take up a lot of room.

Not only that, but because hydrogen is the smallest element and can find its way in between other molecules, keeping it contained inside a tank is difficult – estimates suggest a hydrogen fuel tank can lose about half its fuel to the atmosphere over a fortnight.

The biggest barriers to hydrogen so far are the lack of fuel stations and the high price of both the fuel and the development of the resources needed to manage it. While a refuelling network is a good start, there also needs to be significant development of plants to source hydrogen by renewable means.

Systems are available that can extract hydrogen from water in the air, even in very hot and dry places where it will likely be more viable to make hydrogen fuel using solar power.

Hydrogen can also be extracted from Australia’s coal resources, with a pilot program already in place to trial the technology used to extract it. Hydrogen can also be harvested off 

There are also concerns about the safety of transporting hydrogen, as it is a volatile gas – think of the Hindenberg disaster as a sign of how much energy it can release when oxidised. 

However, many argue that hydrogen-powered vehicles are no less safe than petrol-powered equivalents, and a surprising solution to moving it around could be to simply turn it into liquid ammonia using nitrogen found naturally in the air we breathe.

A hydrogen refuelling network will definitely benefit the trucking industry. The long-term gains for everyone else, though, are not yet clear.