氢:未来燃料可持续组合的一部分

In past features we’ve written about the potential of hydrogen and the production scale-up and technologies required to realise this potential. Now we focus on one of the sectors where hydrogen can play a major role.

处理道路废气排放, 铁路, aviation and marine transport is critical if the world is to meet the obligations of the Paris Agreement.

Significant progress has already been made in many countries to decarbonise electricity generation through renewable energy. These efforts, however, represent merely the initial steps in our collective effort to decarbonise. The transportation sector poses one of the most significant challenges to decarbonisation goals, 在某种程度上, to the inherent need to store energy for use at another time or location.

仅在英国, transport accounted for 33% of total carbon-dioxide equivalent emissions in 2018 at 121 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent - nearly double that emitted by power stations for energy supply^[1]. Progress to decarbonise the UK’s transport sector has been stagnant, 仅公路运输的排放量就超过了1990年的水平^[2].

氢是溶液吗??

氢 may offer the transport sector a route to decarbonisation through large-scale technology expansion. 通过可再生能源电解生产, 甲烷的蒸汽重整与碳捕获, 或者生物质的蒸汽重整在美国，氢可以作为一种无碳的运输燃料. 当通过氢燃料电池使用时, it offers opportunity for a variety of transport modes and the only by-products are heat and water vapor. This brings a substantial additional benefit of avoiding local air pollution which is affecting the health of millions of people worldwide.

在环境条件下扩散的气体, hydrogen must be compressed in order to minimise the volume of storage required onboard any vehicle. It has an impressive energy density of three times that of hydrocarbon fuels such as diesel and it is this energy density that is appealing to advocates and could lend itself particularly well to heavy and long-range transport applications such as heavy goods vehicles, 火车, 船舶和飞机. 此外, hydrogen refuelling can be around 15 times faster than electric charging, with four hydrogen dispensers able to do the job of 60 fast charger stations ^[3].

除了 to looking at hydrogen as a fuel source in its own right, hydrogen-based fuels can also be created and used in much the same way as biofuels.

为未来提供燃料的可持续组合

A focus of efforts to decarbonise transport has been electrification via battery electric vehicles (BEVs) such as cars, 公共汽车, 飞机, 火车和船. 除了, 铁路ways and train lines operate from a continuous supply of electricity fed via overhead lines.

电动汽车, 当然, can only claim to be as green as the source electricity used to power them, coupled with the carbon intensity of the vehicle manufacturing process. 额外的挑战包括充电时间过长, 有限的范围, 可比能量密度差, 自放电和降解问题, 材料费用, 以及体重处罚. 随着技术的进步，这些挑战正在被克服, but mainly for smaller and lighter vehicles and less so for large vehicles and/or longer-range applications. 这就是氢可能发挥关键作用的地方.