From March 26 to 28, 2024, the 2024 China Commercial Vehicle Forum was held in Shiyan City, Hubei Province. Hosted by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, with the theme of "New Pace, New Results, New Improvement, Helping the High-quality Development of the Commercial Vehicle Industry", this forum is based on the high-quality development requirements of the industry, the realization of the national "double carbon" goal, the transformation and innovation needs of the automobile industry, and promotes reform, transformation and development with innovation, so as to help the high-quality development of the commercial vehicle industry. Among them, at the "Opening Ceremony and Conference Forum" held on the afternoon of March 27, Peng Suping, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and professor of China University of Mining and Technology, delivered a wonderful speech. The following is a transcript of the speech.
Distinguished leaders, distinguished academicians Sun, distinguished entrepreneurs and friends, the topic of my report today is "Research on China's Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Development Strategy". On March 8, when Chairman Wan Gang organized a discussion with the China Association for Science and Technology on the issue of the Yangtze River Hydrogen Corridor raised by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Chongqing Municipality, the leading comrades of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology assigned me a task to attend this meeting, and I will try to use 15 minutes to finish.
As you know, in the past two or three decades, the pattern of energy development in the world has been proposed to develop from the consumption of fossil energy to renewable energy. In the process of development, we have encountered difficulties in China, because China is a country dominated by coal and fossil energy. We have calculated that in the last 25 years, more than 62% of the funding on energy research in China has been spent on the development of renewable energy. But by last year, if you look at the figures that have been published, renewables account for no more than 8% of primary energy, excluding water. Therefore, China is completely taking the path of renewable energy and cannot achieve the goal of "double carbon", so China has to take another path, that is, how to low-carbon use of fossil energy. The process of low-carbon utilization is the process of hydrogenation and carbon reduction, and the role of hydrogen in it plays a role as a medium.
From the whole way of energy development, the steam engine was invented at the end of the 18th century, and coal was widely used. In the forties of the last century, the internal combustion engine was invented, and later the gas turbine, oil and gas became a major energy source. But in this way of transformation, it is not the invention of the internal combustion engine or the gas turbine that replaces coal. But knowing that coal is now 56 to 57 percent, it is still the overall energy in China, and the power plant is still the people's power plant. Now that hydrogen energy is actually the conversion of hydrogen, fuel cell technology is gradually maturing. The fuel cell power generation method has changed from the previous process of burning boilers and internal combustion engines to heating and producing ions, a process of discharging, and it has changed from the previous physical power generation to chemical power generation, so the revolution is in this place.
Many of our comrades now talk about hydrogen energy, only talking about the attributes of energy, hydrogen has three characteristics, it is not only energy, it is also a resource and all other chemical products raw materials. Second, hydrogen is also a material for energy storage. Thirdly, it's a technical way of transformation. Therefore, when we talk about it in the future, we must talk about three aspects, which really include the main connotation of hydrogen energy development.
After this is proposed, it should be said that in the past 15 years of development, countries around the world have promoted hydrogen as a national policy, more than 40 countries have made hydrogen energy development plans, and more than 40 countries have planned, and now there are more than 80 countries.
We all know the process of doing it, including the United States and Japan, and we feel that we used to make pure hydrogen, including the United States, which now proposes to reduce the price of hydrogen in the next ten years. Down, we also have two problems: one is the cost problem, and the second is the security problem. Therefore, many people say that the problem of safety cannot be solved in a short time, so they in turn propose green ammonia and green methanol. Green methanol is green ammonia raised in the resurrection of green methanol. Because of the problem of methanol, we all know that China used methanol 20 years ago, and at that time, it was eliminated, and the monopoly of the industry believed that methanol was toxic in the process of use, which caused unsafety to people. Now that we've done research, it's actually very little unsafe because of methanol. Moreover, now the countries of the Middle East know that in recent years, in China's investment, methanol companies have invested tens of billions of projects, so China will not refuse under the current circumstances. Now when we talk about hydrogen energy, we can't talk about pure hydrogen completely, and hydrogen and derivatives should be considered together.
I won't talk about the process of this invention. I have an experience that before and after the 2010 Copenhagen Conference, we did not have a deep understanding of China's "dual carbon" and carbon dioxide issues. By 2013, as everyone knows, the world has announced that the per capita energy share of Chinese has exceeded the world average, which is the first figure. The second figure is that after 2013, 70% of the world's total new carbon dioxide will be produced in China. China will not be able to do these two indicators.
In 2011, the European Community proposed a carbon tax on all aircraft passing through Europe, but at that time, China and the United States pressed it down, because we are two aviation powers. But after 2010, everyone knew that the United States discovered shale gas, it enacted the Clean Electricity Production Act, and 15 years later, it didn't have a new coal power plant, and it burned natural gas because it was rich in shale gas.
I will tell you about this proportional relationship, which proposes the "Clean Electricity Production Law", and the emission of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour cannot exceed 673 grams, which is converted into 210 grams of standard coal. As you know, the emission of carbon dioxide in our country's power development, coal consumption at the end of the "13th Five-Year Plan" we are still 310 grams. If we follow this indicator system, all our power plants in China will have to be shut down, so this is a crisis or a crisis. So what China must do, let me explain it to you.
In the past, we considered the maturity of the technology in the process of doing research on hydrogen energy, and now we have also proposed how to make the purity safer. We are now proposing that China should remember that all technologies must be related to the market, to the consumption side or the demand side, including the closed-door meeting this morning, during which we are considering, and I will tell you how we think about hydrogen energy in a moment. As I just said, we must first consider pure hydrogen to pan-hydrogen, because the main thing is to reduce the cost and ensure safety and reliability. Ammonia and methanol, all our standards are readily available, so we can speed things up. Second, pure hydrogen, including the green hydrogen that is now advocated, I tell you that in the whole world and in China, green hydrogen, that is, electric hydrogen, accounts for less than 0.2% of the hydrogen production process. Now some public opinion has proposed that China will mainly develop green hydrogen in the future, and it is difficult for us to take a 0.2% as the characteristic of our plan when we make energy planning. That's why I'm telling you that in the future, the main thing is stable, reliable, and low-cost hydrogen, and that's what we're pursuing. I won't go into the details.
As I just said, we need to put the current energy-related hydrogen, some comrades proposed to focus on green hydrogen, including yesterday I and Academician Sun Fengchun also said, we proposed green hydrogen, but also proposed blue hydrogen, and the blue hydrogen that is absorbed by carbon dioxide should be treated equally, so that China's hydrogen industry can develop. To tell the truth, all the hydrogen energy industry is built, and all the bases are not green hydrogen bases, but can only be built on the basis of industry.
We have done some hydrogen production work, we are talking about electric vehicles, there is a better one in the energy, hydrogen production products have now exceeded nearly half of China, almost all the alkaline electrolyzers in the world are exported by China, but the solid oxide electrolyzers pursued in the world are now we are also doing on a large scale, we hope that when the alkaline electrolyzer is replaced, it will inevitably go to this aspect.
China is doing this process, and the international community is also doing it, so I won't talk about it one by one.
I will not go into all the details of recent developments.
Third, I will tell you about batteries, because about the way of hydrogen conversion, some companies now also put hydrogen in the gas stove to burn, I tell you, do not advocate it. Because hydrogen is a secondary energy source, the calorific value of hydrogen itself is twice as low as that of natural gas, and it is proposed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but in fact, you have not brought the cost of hydrogen production, so it is not advocated. In the future, there will be only one aircraft, and now the carbon dioxide emissions of gas turbines in the aircraft are very high, and now the gas turbines are now experimenting with pure hydrogen in the air, and we are going to evaluate that project recently. For the rest, we think it's okay to take the conventional goal of carbon reduction.
One of the processes is the proton membrane and the second is the solid oxide. As you know, the United States is not very good at proton membrane now, its solid oxide fuel cell is high, and the United States of combined heat and power is doing well, and now Bromie and (sound) have done a lot of it, and recently he is slowly introducing it to South Korea, in the implementation of research, one community after another, its primary energy generation capacity is more than 60%, and carbon dioxide should be popularized, and at the same time supply hot water, its energy efficiency is more than 90%, this is our goal.
If you look at the power plant now, it's different from our old power plant, it's on both sides of the street, it doesn't take up land, and it doesn't burn and it doesn't produce PM2.5. We did it ourselves, and I told you that after we did it ourselves in the lab, we had a power generation efficiency of more than 53%, because we are now at the highest rate of about 38% in China. Second, we have more than 94% of carbon dioxide, reaching more than 90 percent, and it consumes 9 to 12% of energy to popularize carbon dioxide in people's power plants, so we actually have more than 60%, which is made in the laboratory, and the consistency is not so strong. If the production line is built, we think it will be even higher. After reporting to the relevant central departments, we hope to make megawatts and 10 megawatts of this project, and now we are further advancing this matter.
This is some work, green ammonia and green methanol are now being promoted in Fujian, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Shandong, so I won't talk about them one by one.
Pipeline hydrogen blending and pipeline pure hydrogen, not long ago Chairman Wan Gang gave us another discussion, in the past in the academic community raised the problem of hydrogen embrittlement, may be less concerned about it, because in fact, hydrogen embrittlement problem may occur under pressure, under conventional circumstances may be higher.
I won't talk about these jobs anymore, I'll talk about a few how we're going to do it, and I'll talk about six application scenarios.
First, we should do electricity-hydrogen coupling and increase the proportion of renewable energy. In 2013, China's renewable energy appeared in the western region of a wide range of gas tanks, announced 39%, in fact, some places more than 50%, now we take hydrogen energy as the best way to consume renewable energy, make it into hydrogen, because this place becomes hydrogen, released can be greatly expanded.
Second, I just talked about the overall coal gasification fuel cell power generation, which is directly into the fuel cell after the coal gasification is completed, and converts the concentrated carbon dioxide produced into chemical raw materials such as carbon monoxide or methane, so that the carbon dioxide is not emitted in the entire high-carbon energy utilization process, which is a job we want to do.
The third is to remove carbon dioxide from the coal chemical or petrochemical process, which is SOEC.
Fourth, fuel cell heavy trucks, I said a sentence this morning, how to give full play to China's fuel cell vehicles and electric vehicles, and later the fuel cell heavy truck as a fuel cell to avoid electric vehicles, because the weight of heavy trucks with electric vehicles is too large, and the attenuation through acceleration is relatively fast, and fuel cell vehicles are now a large number of 600 kilometers have appeared. There are several regions that have raised the issue of hydrogen corridors and hydrogen highways in recent times.
The fifth, ships or ports, this is what we are going to do next, because now this place is better to promote the application scenarios.
Sixth, hydrogen metallurgy. Recently, I ran a batch in the country, Shanxi's Jinnan Steel Mill, it itself through heavy trucks, it consumes all the internal logistics in its own consumption, it uses coke oven gas and converter gas to produce hydrogen, the cost is 14 yuan, and it is sold to the market for 20 yuan, which is cheaper than diesel, so the enthusiasm is very high.
We can further promote these works in the future, and when we now propose that the cost of hydrogen production is about 20 yuan, the whole country can do it, and 20 yuan is a basic line, compared with the line of diesel, which is what we need to do, and it is only combined with the current industrial hydrogen production.
Regarding the reduction of cost problems and the improvement of life expectancy, this is what we have specifically put forward, and I will not talk about them one by one, thank you!
(Note: This article is based on on-site shorthand and has not been reviewed by the speaker)
Source: China Commercial Vehicle Forum
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