With the decline in oil and gas production and the increase in both oil and gas prices finding alternative means of producing electrical energy and being able to store some of that energy has become a major priority amongst energy technology researchers.

Hydrogen fuel cells

Fuel cells have an obvious and important role to play here. They are a relatively simple device being essentially an electrochemical cell that creates electrical energy from the reaction between a fuel supply and an oxidizing agent. There are a number of possible combinations of fuel and oxidant available but perhaps the most familiar is the hydrogen fuel cell that uses hydrogen as the fuel and oxygen (from air) as the oxidant.

Because a typical single fuel cell only produces less than 1 volt at full load then in order to produce the energy required for most applications a number of cells have to be connected together either in parallel or in series to form a fuel cell “stack”. Connecting the cells together in parallel allows a higher current to be provided whereas connecting them together in series produces a higher voltage level.

Fuel cells have been used successfully in a wide range of applications including space craft, submarines, boats, domestic and business premises (providing heat as well as power) and of course in cars and small vans.

Research into fuel cell design in Scotland is well covered through a number of multi discipline groups from different universities working successfully together and independently.

New energy carriers

Fuel cell design, prototyping and testing including the development of new materials for cell construction are the subject of intensive research and development as are investigations into new energy carriers – the fuel for fuel cells.

Compared to a battery powered car that requires several hours of recharge time a hydrogen fuel cell powered electric vehicle can be refuelled as conveniently and as quickly as a petrol or diesel engine vehicle.

But it may be that hydrogen is not the best choice for running an automotive fuel cell. For a start you need to carry around four times as much liquid hydrogen as petrol to produce the same amount of energy. So the range of a hydrogen fuel cell powered car may be considerably less although this may be a minor inconvenience compared with the future problems of availability of petrol and diesel and of course its price.

The question then is how to carry more hydrogen in a smaller space. There is a lot of research work going on looking into the use of nanomaterial and liquids that can absorb hydrogen and other novel developments.

However, there is also work being done on the use of other liquid fuels including Ammonia which can also be used directly to power a fuel cell or the Ammonia can be “split” into hydrogen and nitrogen and the hydrogen used to power the fuel cell. Similarly, work in Scotland is progressing on the use of Urea for use with fuel cells because Urea is easily produced.

This work on the development of these and other new fuels and the development of the fuel cells that can use them is also very much a multi-disciplinary process involving different Scottish teams and universities.

Hydrogen production

The production of hydrogen whether for use in fuel cells or for the manufacturing of other fuels such as ammonia is itself the subject of research programmes. One Scottish university has even developed a prototype steam electrolyser which is a much more efficient technology than a conventional electrolyser because some of the energy is supplied as heat and so cheaper than electricity and because the electrolysis reaction itself is more efficient at high temperatures. Producing hydrogen using clean, renewable electrical sources such as wind or tidal is also a way of storing that energy for later use or to use when the renewable source isn’t available.

Electrical storage technologies

However, the work of Scottish researchers also includes electrical storage technologies such as high performance batteries and flow cells. Specifically, work is being done on the development of new battery electrolytes and other battery related materials for components such as electrodes. These are aimed at providing improvements in the
performance of batteries for a wide range of applications Flow batteries though are very different to conventional batteries and are an electrochemical energy storage device that separates power from energy. In most  arrangements, electrolytes are stored outside the electrochemical cell, and flow through the cell during the charging and discharging process. They are important because they can be built on a large scale and therefore may be used to provide very high power and very high capacity batteries for load levelling applications on the electricity grid system and for smoothing out the generation of electricity from some renewable sources such as wind turbines.

Scottish universities are heavily involved in the development of this technology and are members of the “International Flow Battery Forum”.

Alongside the economic aspects of the oil and gas sector there is also the important field of international business transactions and natural resources and energy law and policy which is also a topic for research in Scotland.