Why India’s Largest Refiner Indian Oil Corporation Betting Big on Hydrogen Fuel Cells and not Lithium-ion Batteries to Revolutionize Electric Vehicles in India?

This iconic element controlled our first inner ignition motors, took us to the moon and back, and was found before petroleum derivatives.

However, it has taken almost 200 years for this spotless vitality source to try and be considered for the roads. Presently, as the world gazes at a vitality emergency and thinks about environmental change, hydrogen is additionally on the table as a green option in contrast to non-renewable energy sources.

“Hydrogen has never appreciated so much global and cross-sectoral intrigue, even notwithstanding great ongoing advancement in other low-carbon vitality innovations, for example, batteries and renewables,” says an ongoing report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). It is similarly also. On account of responsibilities made by governments around the globe to diminish their net outflows by 2050, areas whose necessities can be met by power are in the glare. These incorporate aeronautics, delivering, and significant Long Distance transport. “How perform you charge overwhelming responsibility vehicles like transports and trucks and furthermore ships and airplane through lithium-particle batteries?” asks S.S.V. Ramakumar, Director, Research & Development, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC). The appropriate response, he accepts as does the IEA, lies with hydrogen-based power devices.

Ramakumar clarifies that since hydrogen wipes out all impediments of lithium-particle batteries, it could be “a definitive green portability choice for India”. What he is alluding to isn’t simply “go uneasiness”— the dread about the separation went by an electric vehicle in one charge—yet additionally the significant expense of batteries, the difficulties of setting up pan India charging stations and infrastructure, and a removal instrument for these cells. In addition, it’s not satisfactory whether lithium-particle batteries will be as productive in a tropical nation like India, as somewhere else.

How about we return to hydrogen. There’s a motivation behind why it wasn’t viewed as an option in contrast to non-renewable energy sources. Truth be told in 2009, at that point United States secretary of energy department Steven Chu cut subsidizing for hydrogen-based energy units refering to four reasons: One, hydrogen is exceptionally inflammable and hard to store; two, it was exorbitant to create; three, framework to appropriate hydrogen must be assembled; and four, the power module wasn’t as sturdy, ease, and amazing as the inside ignition motor.

A ton has changed since. Hydrogen currently rivals lithium-ion batteries as a fuel for what’s to come. Think about this: Once charged, a vehicle with a 5-kg hydrogen chamber can cover 550-600 km, contrasted with 80-100 km on a lithium-ion battery. Refueling takes three-five minutes, much the same as that for a compacted gaseous petrol (CNG)- fuelled vehicle, while a battery may take hours to charge. Hydrogen’s vitality content, as well, is higher than that of petroleum derivatives. Likewise, the materials utilized in hydrogen cells can be reused, not normal for batteries. These components make it a right fit for medium or overwhelming vehicles. No big surprise Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury says he’s seen a “developing eagerness to investigate the capability of hydrogen as a potential avionics fuel”.

Internationally, the selection of hydrogen as a fuel has been rising. As indicated by the IEA, 11,000 hydrogen-fueled vehicles are out and about, with 20,000 fork-lift trucks at distribution centers. Nations starting to lead the pack in such vehicles incorporate the United States, Japan, Denmark, Germany, China, France, and South Korea. Carmakers, for example, Toyota, Hyundai, and Honda sell hydrogen-controlled vehicles which are two-three times more eco-friendly than their petroleum partners. “Hydrogen is the innovation of things to come—accessible today,” says Charles Freese, who heads General Motors’ power devices business.

While India is as yet discussing the correct innovation for the future, it bodes well to take a gander at the master plan “like giving a perfect situation as opposed to focussing on the correct innovation”, says IOC Chairman Sanjiv Singh. A few alternatives are being investigated. Pilots of hydrogen-controlled vehicles are on and India is on course to have transports that sudden spike in demand for hydrogen-spiked fuel soon.

While it’s still early days for hydrogen in India, industry pioneers, for example, Toyota Tsusho Corp. Chairman Jun Karube and shipbuilder Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ President and CEO Seiji Izumisawa think utilizing hydrogen as fuel would help make a cleaner, vitality proficient future.

What are hydrogen-based energy components? “The power module,” clarifies Ramakumar, “is an electrochemical gadget that changes over the chemical energy originating from the hydrogen tank into electrical energy to drive the engine and henceforth the vehicle.”

Power devices have particular points of interest over lithium-ion batteries. A little 5-kg hydrogen tank appended to the energy unit involves an a lot littler region than a progression of batteries that power a vehicle. It is likewise a lot lighter since aluminum, utilized in energy components, is one-fourth the heaviness of lithium, guaranteeing higher mileage. With 55% proficiency, energy components are better than traditional vehicle motors which run at 25% effectiveness. This implies not exclusively does an energy component fit in a vehicle, it is additionally more productive than an ordinary motor.

An ongoing KPMG report says that during the second period of electrification of transport, energy unit based electric vehicles “can come in as a supplementing innovation” to lithium-particle battery-fueled ones. For India, which pays huge aggregates for raw petroleum imports, it should have a greater influence. Also, contrasted with lithium-particle batteries, energy components appear the better choice since India does not have the crude materials—lithium and cobalt—and the procedures to produce lithium-ion batteries. That is not all. “In the event that lithium-particle batteries keep on being charged through power delivered from coal and other non-renewable energy sources, it will just mean moving ecological contamination from urban communities to the spot of age or from the roads to the power plants,” says Singh.

Then again, hydrogen is found in wealth in nature. Additionally, methane, a processing plant result, is a rich wellspring of hydrogen. In any case, taking into account India’s green objectives, Indian Oil Corporation, the greatest maker and shopper of methane in the nation, proposes to deliver it from sustainable sources. “We can without much of a stretch do as such by parting steam [the vaporous type of water] into hydrogen and oxygen by utilizing power created from solar panels and from bio-methanisation of agrarian waste or by changing over bio-waste to bio gas,” says Ramakumar. The bio-methanisation process that IOC has created is a distinct advantage, highlighted by Singh. It is customized for India as there seems to be “no deficiency of horticultural waste in the nation or the correct innovation to deliver bio gas”, he says.

Under the oil and gaseous petrol service’s Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation conspire, open segment oil purifiers are helping private business people set up bio-methanisation plants, with a confirmation to get all the packed bio-gas they produce at a fixed cost for perpetuity. Almost 230 such articulations of intrigue have been given up until now. Be that as it may, what makes the Research & Development group at IOC hopeful about its prosperity is the way that they have distinguished, created, and licensed certain microorganisms that will yield the most extreme measure of methane from natural biomass. “Through our two-phase digestive related procedure and utilizing our own licensed microorganisms, we can recuperate almost 85% of methane from horticultural waste, while customary players are recouping just 65%-70% methane,” says Ramakumar. It is just a short time before the filtration level arrives at 95% methane making it as great a fuel as CNG.

Singh, the main impetus in every single such development at the rambling R&D focus in Faridabad, says his organization is all set into creation. Truth be told, IOC has just placed in its offered for the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy’s ongoing articulation of enthusiasm calling associations to run four indigenously created hydrogen power device controlled transports as a pilot venture. These transports will initially utilize on Delhi’s streets and afterward in the National Capital Region for a long time.

The 25-seater transports won’t just assistance the administration accumulate information on the eco-friendliness’ and outflows, yet in addition its business suitability and the conceivable techno-monetary obstacles. It will likewise enable the legislature to set guidelines and methods in regards to guideline, normalization, and the wellbeing of the whole hydrogen esteem chain right from its creation to transportation to reconciliation with the electrical framework or the Personal computer in the transport.

Ramakumar says his organization has the fundamental aptitude to run these transports securely. “We have just run Tata transports on our R&D grounds utilizing hydrogen energy unit innovation created by Ballard Power, an innovation organization that was spun off from the United States – based General Electric,” he says.

To make hydrogen power devices a triumph, the organization has gone into a tripartite game plan with two different accomplices. One is the Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Science (IISc), a chief research foundation, and the other a main electric transport integrator, whose name IOC won’t reveal. The IOC look into group will modify the energy unit to work on the fuel that is delivered in the nation, and the integrator’s job will be to adjust the electronic control the executives arrangement of the vehicle with the power device. The evidence of idea of hydrogen creation, grew mutually by IOC and IISc, has just been set up and is right now at exhibition level.

Modifying power devices is significant in light of the fact that they require unadulterated hydrogen to work, which accompanies an expense. For example, 1 kg of 99.9% unadulterated hydrogen costs around ₹550-600, while that with a virtue of 99.99% is around ₹800 and the one with 99.999% immaculateness will cost ₹1,100. “On the off chance that we can utilize 99.9% pure hydrogen for our energy units, not exclusively will it cut down the expense of power modules yet in addition help in its mass implementation,” says Ramakumar.

Truth be told, costs have been the greatest deterrent in the mass appropriation of energy units. The thought is to cut down the conveyed cost of hydrogen-based power devices beneath the mongrel – lease $14 a kg for petroleum derivatives to $3 per kg for sustainable power source. That is the hole that should be spanned. Ramakumar contends that inner examinations have demonstrated that cutting down the cost is famously conceivable once bio-methanisation takes off. Being a synthetic substances organization implies IOC has the mastery to create, handle, transport, and even administer the exceptionally inflammable hydrogen at its gas stations.

While the innovation develops further, trust Indian advancement to locate a center way—hydrogen-spiked CNG (H-CNG), which IOC has thought of. By mixing 18% hydrogen in CNG, vehicles won’t just diminish carbon dioxide and hydrocarbon emanations by 70%, yet additionally increment effectiveness by 5%. All the more critically, vehicles with the more seasoned Bharat Stage IV (BS IV) motors will have discharges like those of a BS VI motor. As per the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority, the fuel cost would ascend by just 75p per km over conventional CNG.

There are two different ways to bring H-CNG to gas stations. One is to mix it at a far off area and afterward carry it to the stations; the other is to blend it at the station—which is less expensive. IOC’s R&D group has protected a compound procedure by which it can create hydrogen in a reactor, which would then be able to be associated with the primary CNG pipe at the administration station. “This innovation won’t just empower us to cut down expenses by about 33%, yet in addition increment proficiency by 5%,” says Ramakumar.

Observing these turns of events, the Supreme Court has requested that India’s greatest refiner study the plausibility of H-CNG transports. As a major aspect of a pilot, IOC will run 50 open transports on H-CNG in Delhi for a half year and give information, for example, the exhibition of the motor as far as eco-friendliness and the heap it can take and afterward contrast it and conventional CNG-fueled vehicles. Preliminaries will start from November,2020.

The R&D group at IOC isn’t only sure of the achievement of H-CNG yet in addition of hydrogen energy units, which they accept is the innovation for what’s to come.

French author Jules Verne had anticipated something comparable about 150 years back. “I accept that water will one day be utilized as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which comprise it, utilized separately or together, will outfit a limitless wellspring of warmth and light…” Verne had written in his novel The Mysterious Island.