Hydrogen Supply
Hydrogen for our fuel cell system is delivered in cylinders by truck. The hydrogen is most likely produced by the steam-reforming of natural gas and is thus 'brown' hydrogen, which is not renewable.
Clearly this is not a sustainable solution and does not further our ambitions to become carbon neutral. There are a number of improvements which can be made:
- Install a gas reformer on-site which will generate hydrogen from mains gas thus eliminating the need for road transport and sparing the cost of hydrogen delivery.
- Source 'green' hydrogen, produced from a renewable source (e.g. wind, solar) or from waste (e.g. anaerobic digestion of sewage).
It is worth noting at this point that the objective of installing the fuel cell system was not directly to move towards carbon neutrality. There are numerous other benefits:
- The challenge of relying entriely on the fuel cell motivates reductions in energy use.
- The infrastructure required to support the fuel cell installation is the same as that required to accomodate other, renewable, forms of micro-generation at Arcola and thus it is the first step in developing a 'test-bed' for technology demonstration.
- The development of the next generation of fuel cell systems requires early-adopters to drive the market and demonstrate potential benefits.