Modine, ChevronTexaco Team Up to Create Hydrogen Infrastructure

Motor, May 2005 by Nash, Tom

The Modine Manufacturing Co. and ChevronTexaco Technology Ventures, a ChevronTexaco subsidiary, have joined forces to establish a method for creating fueling stations to supply hydrogen for mobile fuel cells. The focus of the joint effort is research and development on a new approach to increase the efficiency and reduce the cost and complexity of hydrogen generation for distributed energy stations.

Automakers and their technology support partners are currently working on ways to make fuel cell vehicles functional yet reasonable in cost. However, developing an infrastructure for creating and delivering hydrogen is a barrier that still needs to be faced.

The Modine/ChevronTexaco team recently presented a paper on advanced steam methane reforming (SMR) at the National Hydrogen Association conference in Washington, DC. The group is working to develop and commercialize fuel-processing technologies that leverage existing energy infrastructures and convert a variety of fuels, such as natural gas, into hydrogen. This is critical in enabling the practical application of hydrogen in transportation.

In producing hydrogen from natural gas for hydrogen energy stations, ChevronTexaco and Modine are applying innovative engineering to traditional SMR technology. The result is a technology that produces hydrogen at a lower cost.

"This is an excellent opportunity for us to demonstrate the feasibility of a hydrogen infrastructure," said Mark Baffa, director of Modine's Fuel Cell Products Group. "It's a novel and unique approach, taking a very complex system and scaling it down to a viable commercial appliance, all self-contained. We have deployed all of what we know about thermal management and SMR and processed it into a single device. No one has been able to do that before. We hope that our collective work will demonstrate that it is possible to support a fuel cell and hydrogen vehicle industry," he added.