To find out the raison d’etre of hydrogen from fossil as an energy carrier in the future, a history of hydrogen development and utilization as an energy carrier including major hydrogen projects in the world were reviewed.

And in consequence, the fossil fuels were found to have still important role as the resources of hydrogen at least for some decades in the future.

Oil products have been widely used as automotive fuels since internal combustion engines were developed. The fuels are also expected to be useful as fuels for Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCVs) currently being developed by automotive industry world-wide. In this paper the aptitude of gasoline for FCV fuel has been discussed in terms of 1) fuel supply infrastructure, 2) energy efficiency, 3) reforming technology and 4) clean fuel technology from energy supplier’s point of view. The discussion indicates that FCVs equipped with on-board gasoline reformers will be an economical and energy-efficient intermediate option until hydrogen supply infrastructure becomes widely available although there are some technical issues to be

solved.

Natural gas is considered to be the least environmentally damaging fossil fuel. In addition, its resource base might be secure for the Jong term by the enormous amount of natural gas estimated available in gas hydrates. Current status and the state-of the art technologies of the hydrogen productions based on natural gas are outlined.

Hydrogen is one of the future energy media to reduce CO₂ emission, however, a primary energy is required to produce hydrogen from fossil fuels or water. Taking account of global warming issue, nuclear energy without CO₂ emission is suitable for a huge amount of hydrogen production compared with fossil fuel energy. Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI) has planning to couple a hydrogen production system by means of steam reforming of methane with the High Temperature Gas cooled Reactor (HTGR), named HTTR with a reactor outlet coolant temperature of 950°C. This paper introduces R&D program on HTGR hydrogen production system at JAERI. Furthermore, effect on CO₂ emission and economics are discussed.

Coal is the most abundant and economical fuel of all the fossil fuels. However, it has a disadvantage in emission of huge amount of carbon dioxide when burnt directly. As the heat of combustion of coal shows, it has much energy and can be reformed to energetic hydrogen. From the energetic viewpoint, the hydrogen production from coal would be one of the most advantage processes. However, at the present time, this process takes more cost and this process is not commercialized yet. When the technology of gasification is advanced and also the social situation of energy is changed, the hydrogen production from coal would be the preferable process.

Hydrogen is commonly produced from fossil fuel with large energy loss, innevitably accompanied by an endothermic reaction in very high temperature. Solar heat is one of the most hopeful energy source which makes up for the lost. The final hydrogen energy in this process can overcome the original fossil fuel energy. The resulted hydrogen energy consists of fossil energy mainly, but of solar energy partly.

A heat pump system utilizing a reversible reaction pair of methylcyclohexane dehydrogenation / toluene hydrogenation has been proposed for temperature upgrading and heat storage of thermal sources at ca. 200℃ Adequate dehydrogenation catalysis and its reaction mechanism were investigated, on the basis of which new superheated catalysts in liquid-film states were found to be quite effective.

Catalytic dehydrogeno-aromatization of decalin was proposed as the key technology for hydrogen supply to fuel cell vehicles, to which its counter process of catalytic hydrogenation of naphthalene was combined, with hydrogen provided by renewable energy resources such as wind-power. Carbon-supported platinum catalysts could evolve hydrogen efficiently in the liquid-film states at 210℃ under reactive distillation conditions. Carbon-supported bimetallic catalysts (Pt-W/C or Pt-Re/C) gave much larger conversions and reaction rates at the range of external heating temperatures of 210-280℃.The liquid-film concept was confirmed to be effective for practical operation because of its sufficient power densities in addition to its higher hydrogen contents (7.3wt%, 64.8 kg-H₂m³) than the DOE target values (6.5 wt%, 62.0 kg-H₂/m³).

Prodiction of hydrogen from water by photocatalysis has been intensively studied in terms of photon energy utilization relating to the recent issue about alternating energy. The authors and other workers have found several active photocatalysis for overall water splitting being available under ultraviolet light irradiation. Some of such typical examples as well as the knowledge obtained from those studies were summarized. The presently demanded subject is to develop a photocatalyst which works under visible light irradiation. Recent develop concerning visible light responsive photopcatalysts was also presented.

Methanol reformers for portable and automobile fuel-cell systems need to be improved to achieve a shorter start-up time and smaller size. An effective way to do this is to use plate-type catalysts in the reformers. This study is related with the methanol steam reforming on plate type Cu/Zn/Al₂O₃ catalyst prepared applying the anodic oxidation. This catalyst has high catalytic activity and a much lower catalytic-activity deterioration rate than the commercial CuO-ZnO catalyst. The start-up time of the plate-fin-type methanol reformer can be significantly shorter than that of a conventional fixed-bed-type one because of its high heat-transfer performance. Its size should also be significantly smaller because of its high heat transfer performance and smaller of loaded-catalyst volume.

The technical committee of ISO/TC197 Hydrogen Technology was founded in 1989 in conjunction with the world social demand for hydrogen energy activities. The committee is a personal volunteer work. The number of the P-members is now 18 and The number of the O-member is 19. Only one private organization is allowed to participate in the committee as either P-member or 0-member. In Japan, JISC is officially registered as one of the P-members. The committee has already finished settling two 180 standards; ISO 13984 “Liquid hydrogen-land vehicle fuelling system interface” and ISO 14687 “Hydrogen fuel-product specification”. Eight items are now under process toward the ISO standardization.

The present activities is introduced by using OHP slides in this HESS Meeting.