Air Products opens Calif. hydrogen fueling station using wastewater as feedstock
Air Products officially opened its newest California hydrogen fueling station, drawing its feedstock from a sustainable source.
Air Products is pumping hydrogen into fuel cell vehicles that is generated from the municipal wastewater treatment plant at the Orange County Sanitation District (OCSD) in Fountain Valley.
In addition to generating hydrogen, the project also creates electricity and heat from this renewable source, the company said.
This technology application is uniquely the first in the world and opens significant opportunities for other biogas feedstock streams.
Methane gas is created while the wastewater at the OCSD facility sits in holding tanks.
This methane begins a clean-up process where the gas stream enters a purification system and then feeds into a fuel cell, built by FuelCell Energy, where it is reformed to hydrogen.
In the fuel cell, clean electricity is produced for use at the OCSD facility and the heat created could also be directed to several site uses.
Excess hydrogen not converted to electricity leaves the unit and is further purified to make it vehicle grade for fuel cell automobile fueling via Air Products' technology. The facility will produce enough hydrogen for 25 to 50 fuel cell vehicle fuelings per day and generate 250 kilowatts of electricity daily.
"This location will show how well this technology works and can be applied to wastewater and other waste applications to generate hydrogen,” said Ed Heydorn, business development manager for hydrogen energy systems at Air Products.
“It is another first for Air Products in terms of the varied sources of feed from which hydrogen can be produced, stored and dispensed by our proprietary fueling technology,” he continued.
“Another plus is that renewable hydrogen is required to be in the mix in fueling stations in California. We look to this type of technology as a platform to meet the renewable requirement and to supply even cleaner hydrogen to the next generation of fuel cell vehicles."
Heydorn also praised the public-private project collaboration that included the US Department of Energy, which provided partial funding, OCSD, Air Products, FuelCell Energy, National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine, California Air Resources Board and South Coast Air Quality Management District.
"This is the epitome of sustainability by taking a human waste and transforming it into electricity which we need, and transportation fuel that we need, as well as thermal product heat that could serve the process of transforming the feed waste into productive products," said Professor Scott Samuelsen, director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine.
"This project is at the nexus of the challenge for the next millennium associating how we handle in concert transportation, energy and water resources."
Feedstock sources such as agricultural, food, and brewery wastes and landfill gas can benefit from this technology, Air Products said.
If all of these available streams were converted to hydrogen it could support fueling up to 200 million fuel cell vehicles in the U.S. with hydrogen and point to sustainable energy independence.
Air Products was also involved with another fueling station opening in California three months ago and has 11 stations operating in the state overall.
In May, Air Products said its West Coast hydrogen pipeline system and industry-leading fueling technology were integral in opening the US’ first-ever pipeline-fed hydrogen fueling station.
The Torrance station supplies hydrogen for several automobile manufacturers' fuel cell vehicles in the Los Angeles area.
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