For a long time, the mainland has taken pure electric as the main direction of the promotion of new energy vehicles, but hydrogen energy vehicles as another important direction of fossil fuel alternative cleaning solutions have not been shelved in the mainland, from policy promotion to car company technology research and development, and have been tested in many places for long-term trial operation. The large-scale application of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles again at the 2022 Winter Olympics has also become another landmark event for the mainland's strong support for hydrogen energy vehicles.
Hydrogen fuel vehicles power the Winter Olympics
During the Olympic Games, Toyota, as a global partner of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, provided a total of 2,205 Toyota products to the organizing committee, including 140 Toyota's second-generation MIRAI hydrogen fuel cell passenger cars and 107 Costa fuel cell powertrain models. In addition, Beiqi Foton Europe provided 497 hui hydrogen fuel bus services to ensure the Beijing Winter Olympics. In addition, Yutong Bus, Zhongtong Bus, Geely Commercial Vehicles and other car companies have also provided hydrogen fuel cell buses for use in the Winter Olympics.
According to the "Beijing Winter Olympics Low Carbon Management Report (Pre-Competition)" released by the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee, in addition to the 100% green power supply of all venues, clean energy vehicles (non-traditional energy) in the transportation service vehicles used during the Beijing Winter Olympic Games account for 100% of passenger cars and 84.9% of all vehicles. Among them, there are 816 hydrogen fuel vehicles, accounting for nearly 20%. Prior to this, Zhangjiakou's hydrogen energy vehicles have been running smoothly for more than three years, with a cumulative operating mileage of more than 21 million kilometers and a passenger capacity of more than 65 million passengers.
Not only independent brands, but also international hydrogen fuel cell giants have opened up layouts in China. In April 2019, Toyota cooperated with Beiqi Foton and Beijing Yihuatong in the field of hydrogen energy buses, and at this Winter Olympics, Beiqi Foton invested hundreds of vehicles equipped with Toyota's hydrogen fuel cell system to provide support for the Winter Olympics. By 2020, Toyota has laid out an FCEV hydrogen fuel cell vehicle production line in Sichuan FAW Toyota, which is developed by Sichuan FAW Toyota, and the FCEV Costa built based on the domestic sold Costa will be officially unveiled at the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show and provide guarantee services for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
In March 2021, Hyundai Motor Group started construction of the world's first overseas hydrogen fuel cell system production and sales base "HTWO Guangzhou", which is the first plant named after Hyundai Motor's exclusive brand "HTWO". HTWO Guangzhou will cover an area of 207,000 square meters and is the first dedicated plant in China to produce large-scale hydrogen fuel cell systems. According to the modern plan, the new plant is expected to be officially completed in the second half of 2022, and the total investment is expected to reach 8.5 billion yuan by 2030. Hyundai's hydrogen fuel cell vehicle NEXO has also officially released a Chinese version not long ago, and will enter the Chinese market in the near future.
It is reported that among the more than 30 hydrogen refueling stations in the demonstration operation of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Beijing Qingyuan Street Hydrogen Refueling Station, the Beijing Wangquanying Hydrogen Refueling Station, the Beijing Yanhua Xinglong Oil Hydrogen Joint Construction Station, and the Hebei Chongli Xiwanzi Hydrogen Refueling Station, which are responsible for sinopec, have been put into operation in early September 2021, and have supplied more than 260 tons of high-purity hydrogen to Beijing and surrounding markets on the eve of the official opening of the Winter Olympics. PetroChina also completed and put into use four hydrogen refueling stations for the Beijing Winter Olympics, namely the Hebei Prince Edward City Hydrogen Refueling Station, the Beijing Futian Hydrogen Refueling Station, the Beijing Golden Dragon Integrated Energy Service Station and the Hebei Chongli North Oil Hydrogen Joint Construction Station, and the daily hydrogen supply capacity during the Winter Olympics will reach 5500kg.
At present, the hydrogen provided by the hydrogen refueling station is mainly separated and purified from the hydrogen-containing industrial by-product gas. However, on January 28, energy giant Shell Oil announced that one of the world's largest water electrolysis hydrogen production units has begun operations in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province. The project will provide about 50% of the green hydrogen supply for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in Zhangjiakou during the Winter Olympics, which opens on February 4, 2022.
Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are the future?
Of course, as the first element at the beginning of the periodic table, the small and light nature of the hydrogen atom also makes his storage and transportation difficult. It is difficult for ordinary containers to completely limit hydrogen, especially hydrogen in a pressurized or even liquefied state, which can easily pass through imperceptible voids, and even slowly leak through the molecular gaps of the container. At high temperatures and pressures, hydrogen can even pass through very thick steel plates, so the hydrogen storage tank has high process requirements. The large-scale industrial preparation of hydrogen has not yet been well solved, which has brought obstacles to the development of hydrogen energy vehicles.
Not only enterprises continue to exert efforts in the field of hydrogen energy, the mainland has not given up its support for hydrogen energy vehicles while vigorously developing electric vehicles. In the latest "New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2021-2035)", hydrogen energy vehicles have also been mentioned many times. The hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that were widely used at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics once again injected a shot in the arm for the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in China.
However, from the perspective of "carbon neutrality", hydrogen is currently divided into gray hydrogen, blue hydrogen and green hydrogen, of which the hydrogen produced by steam methane reforming or self-heating reforming with fossil energy as raw material is called gray hydrogen; the carbon capture and storage link (CCS) is added in the process of methane steam reforming and self-heat reforming hydrogen production, so that the hydrogen produced is called blue hydrogen. Blue hydrogen has a low carbon footprint, but it cannot eliminate all carbon emissions; green hydrogen refers to hydrogen produced by renewable energy, using electrolyzed water technology, which can achieve true zero emissions.
So far, the over-preparation of green hydrogen is not yet mature, and industrial hydrogen production is still dominated by gray hydrogen and blue hydrogen, and it is not yet possible to achieve true zero emissions in the preparation of hydrogen. For carbon neutrality, what humans have to do is to reduce the mining and utilization of fossil fuels, reduce the release into the atmosphere of carbon that has been sealed in the ground by the earth for hundreds of millions of years, and the gray and blue hydrogen prepared by fossil fuels can reduce uncontrollable carbon emissions, but there are still carbon in fossil fuels that enter the atmosphere through part of the way. Of course, compared with the direct combustion of fossil fuels, the utilization of hydrogen energy still has objective prospects. At present, there are 10 million tons of industrial by-product hydrogen energy that is not fully used in the mainland every year, which is enough to supply millions of "hydrogen vehicles".
However, from the preparation of hydrogen to the transportation to the construction of the hydrogen refueling station network, it is a completely different set of new systems, and the difficulty of promotion is greater than that of charging piles that can be directly used in the existing power grid. For passenger cars used daily by consumers, before the hydrogen refueling station has enough beer machines, even if the hydrogen refueling action is comparable to refueling, the mileage anxiety may be no less than that of pure electric vehicles that need to be charged for a long time. However, for commercial vehicles that require long endurance and large transportation capacity, the power system of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles can show obvious advantages over the giant batteries required for pure electric vehicles, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles may be able to complement pure electric vehicles and revitalize the future automobile market. (Text: Pacific Auto Network Guo Rui)