India’s natural gas distributor GAIL (India) Ltd is to join with an Australian firm Eden Energy Ltd (Eden) in what could be the largest trial of a hydrogen-enriched blend of natural gas (HCNG) for transport. Descibing the trial as commercial in scale, Eden says the project is designed to reduce pollution levels from India’s massive public transport bus fleets. The trial is expected to see between 50-70 buses on the streets of Mumbai, a city of some 16 million people, by the end of this year.
The buses will be fuelled by hythane, a proprietary blend of natural gas enriched with 15-20% hydrogen developed by the US subsidiary of Perth-based Eden. Hythane has been shown to reduce harmful emissions and greenhouse gases from gas-powered vehicles by up to 50% while increasing their efficiency by up to 15%, says Eden.
The Mumbai breakthrough for the demonstration project in the capital of Maharashtra state is encapsulated in a cooperation agreement signed between Eden and GAIL, and its Mumbai-based subsidiary, Mahanagar Gas Limited (MGL).
The new agreement will see Eden over the next nine-twelve months, install an HCNG refuelling station and associated infrastructure at a bus depot in central Mumbai operated by the State-owned BEST Undertaking.
HCNG will initially fuel two buses and expand to more than 50 Natural Gas powered buses. BEST currently operates more than 4,000 buses in Mumbai from 25 bus stations.
More than half of this bus fleet currently uses MGL-supplied natural gas, with BEST progressively converting its entire fleet to natural gas operation by 2013.
The trial buses will use the HCNG fuel for a six-month period, targeted to commence in the last quarter of 2010. Eden states that if the participants are satisfied with the outcome, they will then assess rolling out HCNG fuelled buses across Mumbai’s public bus fleets, and the remainder of MGL’s market footprint which supplies an estimated 25 million people.
Eden’s Executive Chairman, Mr Greg Solomon, said the demonstration project will be the largest Hythane project ever undertaken in the world.
“The fuel has been trialled extensively for more than 15 years in several countries including Canada and the United States but this is the first project to involve a fleet of this size and in a trial designed to produce a commercially viable outcome,” Mr Solomon said.
Last year Eden established its first public HCNG dispensing station – for the Indian Oil Corporation – on the outskirts of the Indian capital, New Delhi.
Eden reports that in early February it executed a non-binding terms sheet under which Indian Oil Corporation will, subject to certain conditions being satisfied, fund the up-scaling to a commercial sized prototype of new technology jointly developed by Eden with the University of Queensland to produce hydrogen and solid carbon including carbon fibres and carbon nanotubes from natural gas. The company says this will potentially open up a cost effective method of producing large quantities of both hydrogen and high value solid carbon which can be used for composite material production.
Eden also recently completed the development with Ashok Leyland, India’s largest bus manufacturer, of a 6-cylinder, 6-litre bus engine specifically designed to run on Hythane.
The Company has also worked with the Indian regulatory authorities for three years helping to develop the necessary safety and operational standards and regulations.
“The Mumbai Hythane trial will provide the substantive ‘on-road’ results to demonstrate Hythane’s ability, on a commercial basis, to help reduce damaging emission levels from mainstream public transport systems and the sub-continent’s infamous pollution levels, and will be the world’s largest single trial of this hydrogen based fuel,” Mr Solomon said.
“Preliminary tests have already shown that hythane is not only a fuel that produces fewer greenhouse gases, but that it can offer major practical benefits by potentially halving NOx output, the cause of the harmful photo-chemical smog, in the more than 50 major cities in India that have commenced or are scheduled to commence development of public bus rapid transit systems designed to run on natural gas.”
Mr Solomon said the large scale testing and use of HCNG in India had been dependent on availability of significantly increased natural gas supplies, which only commenced in April 2009 with the start of large-scale gas production in the offshore KG Basin.
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[...] release of India’s first production HCNG engine will precede the country’s first large-scale refuelling station for hydrogen-enriched natural gas. Due to be constructed by the end of the year, the station will [...]