In January, I had talked about the Asemblon Hydrnol liquid hydrogen carrier that is a room-temperature hydrogen rich chemical compound that can easily separate the H2 to be used for internal combustion engines or fuel cell vehicles. According to Asemblon, their liquid hydrogen carrier can greatly reduce the cost of building a nationwide fueling station infrastructure.
Hydrnol can use the current fueling infrastructure (with slight modification) of trucks, trains, barges and pipelines to deliver their liquid hydrogen carrier to fueling stations nationwide. It is at these fueling stations that Hydrnol will be pumped inside the vehicles at a cost of less than $2.50 per kilogram (equivalent to a gallon).
Once inside the vehicles, hydrogen will be created on demand, separating it from the chemical compound, which can easily be recycled. This will be accomplished by using a retrofit kit supplied by the company including a dual-bladder fuel tank.
Unlike most modern hydrogen fueling stations, which can only service a dozen or fewer hydrogen vehicles a day, the Hydrnol station can service around 100 vehicles before the spent liquid chemical carrier has to be picked up, recycled and re-hydrogenated.
A few years back the U. S. Department of Energy published a document stating that replacing the current gasoline and diesel infrastructure with a hydrogen infrastructure would cost around $500 billion. This figure has since been disputed as flawed.
One company who says this cost can be much cheaper is Asemblon who states that using their product the figure will be less than $50 billion or about the price of the auto industry bailout all said and done and far less than the price of the AIG bailout.
Storing hydrogen as a chemical compound and using it on demand, according to Asemblon is much safer than storing compressed hydrogen gas with safety ratings similar to gasoline or diesel fuel.