Applications & Pathways

Jordan's energy diversification strategy is centred around renewables which are expected will provide the low-cost reliable secure and environmentally sustainable energy required to power its new engines of economic growth – manufacturing transport construction and agriculture.

The National Energy Strategy 2020–2030 presents the evolution of the energy sector under its vision for stimulating demand achieving efficiency and improving electricity system flexibility.

This Renewables Readiness Assessment (RRA) highlights key actions for the short and medium-term that could create more conductive conditions for renewable energy development. It aims to help unlock Jordan's renewable energy potential and provide the means to meet the energy diversification goals of its national strategy.

The study was undertaken by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (MEMR) in collaboration with the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

Key recommendations:

• Provide the necessary conditions for renewables growth in the power sector.
• Foster continued growth of renewable power generation.
• Plan the integration of higher shares of renewable power.
• Incentivise the use of renewables for heating and cooling.
• Support renewable transport and mobility options.
• Catalyse renewable energy investment. Strengthen local industries and create jobs in renewables.

A potential solution to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the transport sector is the use of alternative fuel vehicles (AFV). As global GHG emission standards have been in place for passenger cars for several years infrastructure modelling for new AFV is an established topic. However as the regulatory focus shifts towards heavy-duty vehicles (HDV) the market diffusion of AFV-HDV will increase as will planning the relevant AFV infrastructure for HDV. Existing modelling approaches need to be adapted because the energy demand per individual refill increases significantly for HDV and there are regulatory as well as technical limitations for alternative fuel station (AFS) capacities at the same time. While the current research takes capacity restrictions for single stations into account capacity limits for locations (i.e. nodes) – the places where refuelling stations are built such as highway entries exits or intersections – are not yet considered. We extend existing models in this respect and introduce an optimal development for AFS considering (station) location capacity restrictions. The proposed method is applied to a case study of a potential fuel cell heavy-duty vehicle AFS network. We find that the location capacity limit has a major impact on the number of stations required station utilization and station portfolio variety.

The absorption of CO2 is of importance in carbon capture utilization and storage technology for greenhouse gas control. In the present work we clarified the mechanism of how metal-based ionic liquids (MBILs) Bmim[XCln]m (X is the metal atom) enhance the CO2 absorption capacity of ILs via performing molecular dynamics simulations. The sparse hydrogen bond interaction network constructed by CO2 and MBILs was identified through the radial distribution function and interaction energy of CO2-ion pairs which increase the absorption capacity of CO2 in MBILs. Then the dynamical properties including residence time and self-diffusion coefficient confirmed that MBILs could also promote the diffusion process of CO2 in ILs. That's to say the MBILs can enhance the CO2 absorption capacity and the diffusive ability simultaneously. Based on the analysis of structural energetic and dynamical properties the CO2 absorption capacity of MBILs increases in the order Cl− → [ZnCl4]2-→ [CuCl4]2-→ [CrCl4]- → [FeCl4]- revealing the fact that the short metal–Cl bond length and small anion volume could facilitate the performance of CO2 absorbing process. These findings show that the metal–Cl bond length and effective volume of the anion can be the effective factors to regulate the CO2 absorption process which can also shed light on the rational molecular design of MBILs for CO2 capture and other key chemical engineering processes such as IL-based gas sensors nano-electrical devices and so on.

The use of RES in buildings is difficult for their random nature; therefore the plants using photovoltaic solar collectors must be connected to a power supply or interconnected with Energy accumulators if the building is isolated. The conversion of electricity into hydrogen technology is best suited to solve the problem and allows you to transfer the solar energy captured from day to night from summer to winter. This paper presents the feasibility study for a house powered by PV cogeneration solar collectors that reverse the electricity on the control unit that you command by a PC to power the household using a heat pump an electrolytic cell for the production of hydrogen to accumulate; control units sorting to the utilities the electricity produced by the fuel cell. The following are presented: The Energy analysis of the building the plant design economic analysis.

In 1986 the Dutch national fuel cell program started. Fuel cells were developed under the paradigm of replacing conventional technology. Coal-fired power plants were to be replaced by large-scale MCFC power plants fuelled by hydrogen in a full-scale future hydrogen economy. With today's knowledge we will reflect on these and other ideas with respect to high temperature fuel cell development including the choice for the type of high temperature fuel cell. It is explained that based on thermodynamics proton conducting fuel cells would have been a better choice and the direct carbon fuel cell even more so with electrochemical gasification of carbon as the ultimate step. The specific characteristics of fuel cells and multisource multiproduct systems were not considered whereas we understand now that these can provide huge driving forces for the implementation of fuel cells compared to just replacing conventional combined heat and power production technology.

The co-combustion of diesel fuel with H2 presents a promising route to reduce the adverse effects of diesel engine exhaust pollutants on the environment and human health. This paper presents the results of H2-diesel co-combustion experiments carried out on two different research facilities a light duty and a heavy duty diesel engine. For both engines H2 was supplied to the engine intake manifold and aspirated with the intake air. H2 concentrations of up to 20% vol/vol and 8% vol/vol were tested in the light duty and heavy duty engines respectively. Exhaust gas circulation (EGR) was also utilised for some of the tests to control exhaust NOx emissions.<br/>The results showed NOx emissions increase with increasing H2 in the case of the light duty engine however in contrast for the heavy duty engine NOx emissions were stable/reduced slightly with H2 attributable to lower in-cylinder gas temperatures during diffusion-controlled combustion. CO and particulate emissions were observed to reduce as the intake H2 was increased. For the light duty H2 was observed to auto-ignite intermittently before diesel fuel injection had started when the intake H2 concentration was 20% vol/vol. A similar effect was observed in the heavy duty engine at just over 8% H2 concentration.

Fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) currently have the challenge of high CAPEX mainly associated to the fuel cell. This study investigates strategies to promote FCEV deployment and overcome this initial high cost by combining a detailed simulation model of the passenger transport sector with an energy system model. The focus is on an energy system with 95% CO2 reduction by 2050. Soft-linking by taking the powertrain shares by country from the simulation model is preferred because it considers aspects such as car performance reliability and safety while keeping the cost optimization to evaluate the impact on the rest of the system. This caused a 14% increase in total cost of car ownership compared to the cost before soft-linking. Gas reforming combined with CO₂ storage can provide a low-cost hydrogen source for FCEV in the first years of deployment. Once a lower CAPEX for FCEV is achieved a higher hydrogen cost from electrolysis can be afforded. The policy with the largest impact on FCEV was a purchase subsidy of 5 k€ per vehicle in the 2030–2034 period resulting in 24.3 million FCEV (on top of 67 million without policy) sold up to 2050 with total subsidies of 84 bln€. 5 bln€ of R&D incentives in the 2020–2024 period increased the cumulative sales up to 2050 by 10.5 million FCEV. Combining these two policies with infrastructure and fuel subsidies for 2030–2034 can result in 76 million FCEV on the road by 2050 representing more than 25% of the total car stock. Country specific incentives split of demand by distance or shift across modes of transport were not included in this study.

The modern steelmaker of advanced high-strength steels has always been challenged with the conflicting targets of increased strength while maintaining or improving ductility. These new steels help the transportation sector including the automotive sector to achieve the goals of increased passenger safety and reduced emissions. With increasing tensile strengths certain steels exhibit an increased sensitivity towards hydrogen embrittlement (HE). The ability to characterize the material's sensitivity in an as-delivered condition has been developed and accepted (SEP1970) but the complexity of the stress states that can induce an embrittlement together with the wide range of applications for high-strength steels make the development of a standardized test for HE under in-service conditions extremely challenging. Some proposals for evaluating the material's sensitivity give an advantage to materials with a low starting ductility. Despite this newly developed materials can have a higher original elongation with only a moderate reduction in elongation due to hydrogen. This work presents a characterization of new materials and their sensitivity towards HE.

This article is part of the themed issue ‘The challenges of hydrogen and metals’.

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This paper presents a new Fuel Cell Fuel Consumption Minimization Strategy (FCFCMS) for Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) powered by a fuel cell and an energy storage system in order to minimize as much as possible the consumption of hydrogen while maintaining the State Of Charge (SOC) of the battery. Compared to existing Energy Management Strategies (EMSs) (such as the well-known State Machine Strategy (SMC) Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC) Frequency Decoupling and FLC (FDFLC) and the Equivalent Consumption Minimization Strategy (ECMS)) the proposed strategy increases the overall vehicle energy efficiency and therefore minimizes the total hydrogen consumption while respecting the constraints of each energy and power element. A model of a hybrid vehicle has been built using the TruckMaker/MATLAB software. Using the Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS) which includes several stops and accelerations the performance of the proposed strategy has been compared with these different approaches (SMC FLC FDFLC and ECMS) through several simulations.

This discussion session interrogated the current understanding of hydrogen embrittlement mechanisms in steels. This article is a transcription of the recorded discussion of ‘Hydrogen in steels’ at the Royal Society Scientific Discussion Meeting ‘The challenges of hydrogen and metals’ 16–18 January 2017.

The text is approved by the contributors. E.L.S. transcribed the session. M.P. assisted in the preparation of the manuscript

Link to document download on Royal Society Website