Area 21In the 60,000-square-kilometer Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the high-speed rail network is gradually taking shape, the highways are interconnected, and the traffic flow and logistics are "accelerating". At the same time, the intertwined industrial chain and first-class chain of the three places are also constantly expanding and growing.
Hydrogen energy is an important part of the future national energy system, and it is a strategic emerging industry and a key development direction for future industries. A hydrogen energy industry chain connects Beijing's R&D innovation and industrialization advantages, and Hebei and Tianjin's hydrogen energy and parts supporting advantages. The three places will work together to lay out hydrogen energy application scenarios, promote the clustering and large-scale development of hydrogen energy industries, and accelerate the development of new quality productivity.
On September 30, 2023, on the side of Zhangjiakou Station of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou high-speed railway, hydrogen fuel cell buses are ready to go. (Footage) Photo by Hebei ** reporter Cao Zhi.
Solve problems
In Beijing in Layue, the cold air hits people. At around 5 a.m. on January 19, passengers at the Deshengmen bus station in Beijing were waiting for the bus with their hands rubbed together.
After a while, a 919 bus pulled into the platform. The bus departs from Deshengmen and travels about 80 kilometers northwest of Beijing to Yanqing, a suburb of China. Along the way, in addition to taking the Beijing-Tibet Expressway, you also have to pass through many mountainous areas, with many slopes and long roads, and the temperature is close to minus 20 degrees Celsius. But the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is very frost-resistant, and can even start at a low temperature of minus 35 degrees Celsius.
At the other end of Beijing City, Daxing International Hydrogen Energy Demonstration Zone, the production line is running in the engine factory of Beijing Yihuatong Technology Co., Ltd. The intelligent navigation vehicle delivers the parts required for each station, and carries the newly assembled hydrogen fuel cell to the next test link. This is where the hydrogen fuel cell system on bus 919 comes from.
Now it seems that super frost resistance has been the label of hydrogen vehicles, but a few years ago, it was still a world problem to start quickly under low temperature conditions. Li Feiqiang, deputy general manager of Sinohytec Company, disassembled the "heart" of the battery system - the stack, and counted the key components in it the same.
Hydrogen fuel cells rely on the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity to make the car run. However, because the hydrogen-oxygen reaction produces water, when the temperature drops to a certain level, it will "freeze" the car. "Compared with hydrogen fuel cell companies all over the world, it is difficult to really achieve such a low temperature and rapid start. A few years before the Beijing Winter Olympics, Li Feiqiang led everyone to challenge the low temperature environment in generation after generation of products, setting the goal of minus 35 degrees Celsius for rapid start-up required for operation.
Before 2018, most of the domestic hydrogen fuel cells were imported into foreign stacks, which not only could not be started at low temperatures, but also had the highest risk of breaking the proton exchange membrane once the generated water froze. So, the first step that everyone thought of was how to know in advance whether there was water in it.
The team developed from scratch and handed over a number of invention patents for water content monitoring technology, thus taking the lead in breaking through this problem in China.
If the temperature is low, you can increase the purge to blow away the water in the stack, so as to avoid freezing at low temperatures. After experiencing failure after failure, Li Feiqiang found a way.
The bipolar plates, which are key components in the stack, also affect whether they can be started quickly at low temperatures. Metal is not corrosion-resistant and has a short lifespan, making it particularly unsuitable for commercial vehicles that need to operate for long periods of time. For this reason, graphite plates with greater corrosion resistance were chosen, but the graphite plates were thicker and required to have more heat in a short period of time when starting at low temperatures. The follow-up research focuses on the control technology, so that the hydrogen and oxygen produce more heat in the initial reaction, provide enough heat to the bipolar plate, and then generate electricity after the heating is completed within 120 seconds, so as to achieve low temperature and rapid start-up.
As more and more hydrogen vehicles become available, new questions arise: Where does hydrogen fuel come from?
To answer this question, let's turn our attention to Hebei, which is rich in hydrogen energy resources.
Green hydrogen into Beijing
At about 9 o'clock on January 27, a white truck drove into the warehouse of Haipoer New Energy Technology in Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province. On the huge site, where the snow has not yet cleared, five tubular container trucks loaded with hydrogen fuel are parked in two flat-roofed canopies.
The truck made a big turn, found its position, and slowly reversed to approach the canopy. A man jumped from the cab, dressed in a blue special protective suit.
Lao Du, come to our filling area again to pull hydrogen. Seeing an acquaintance, Li Yanhong, the security director of Hyper, stepped forward to say hello.
Lao Du's name is Du Zhanfeng, and he is a worker of Beijing Honggangshun Transportation. He smiled and replied, "Send another car." ”
At 9:50 a.m. on the same day, the tube bundle container truck loaded with hydrogen fuel was loaded. The truck drove out of the gate of the company's warehouse, all the way to the southeast, to the destination - Yongfeng hydrogen refueling station in Haidian District, Beijing.
Over the years, the hydrogen produced by Hyper Company has not only been used in Zhangjiakou hydrogen energy buses, but also in Beijing Yongfeng and Beijing Shahe hydrogen refueling stations, with a total production and sales of more than 500 tons of hydrogen, contributing to the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei hydrogen energy industry chain.
Many manufacturers are taking the route of producing hydrogen from fossil fuels, which is less costly, but still has a certain amount of carbon emissions. We're different. Li Yanhong explained that Zhangjiakou is a national renewable energy demonstration zone, and they use the abundant local wind power and photovoltaic power generation resources to produce hydrogen by electrolysis of water, and there is no carbon emission in the production process, which is a real green hydrogen product. Today, Hypel produces up to 4 tons of hydrogen per day, with a hydrogen purity of up to 99999%, which fully meets the quality requirements of hydrogen energy vehicles in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
The reason why Hypel has embarked on the road of producing green hydrogen has to start with the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
Hyper is one of the leading manufacturers to ensure the demand for hydrogen for hydrogen vehicles in the Beijing Winter Olympics, with a total of 95 green hydrogen during the period4 tons. Li Yanhong said: "During that time, all employees went to work and produced day and night, which was the first 'hand-in-hand' between Hyper and Beijing. ”
With the deepening of the construction of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei hydrogen fuel cell vehicle demonstration city agglomeration led by Beijing, the application of green hydrogen has ushered in spring. Hypel has signed agreements with Sinopec Beijing Petroleum Branch and CNPC New Energy (Beijing)** to deepen cooperation in the field of hydrogen energy ** and hydrogen energy utilization to promote mutual benefit and win-win results.
Hydrogen "is windy, and the future is promising." Li Yanhong believes that with the help of Zhangjiakou green hydrogen, more hydrogen energy application scenarios in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei will move from blueprint to reality.
"Hydrogen" does what it means
When the technological achievements go out of the laboratory, the various transportation needs of Tianjin Port provide a wealth of hydrogen energy application scenarios.
Hydrogen vehicles are quiet, the driving experience is very comfortable, and you can run for a day to a day and a half when you fill up once. If you run far, you need to add once a day to run several trips to Tianjin Port a day. On January 23, at the hydrogen refueling station in the courtyard of Tiangang Company of New Tiangang Group, Master Zhang, who was preparing to refuel hydrogen for his car, told reporters.
This "New Long March 1" hydrogen heavy-duty truck is equipped with a hydrogen fuel cell, which can achieve "zero carbon emissions". Master Zhang told reporters that part of the company's hydrogen energy heavy trucks travel to and from the plant and railway freight stations outside the plant to transport coal, coke and other materials; Part of it is responsible for the transportation of iron ore from Tianjin Port to the plant.
In 2022, Xintiangang Group launched the first batch of 5 hydrogen energy heavy trucks, and in April 2023, another 30 hydrogen energy heavy trucks were put into use, with a hydrogen refueling capacity of 152 tons and a transportation mileage of 1.25 million kilometers in 2023, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 1,150 tons compared with traditional fuel vehicles.
15 kilometers away from Tiangang Company, next to the plant of Tianjin Rongcheng United Iron and Steel Group, there are four hydrogen refueling stations. The 275 hydrogen heavy-duty trucks that Rongcheng Steel Group has put into operation since 2021 are filled with hydrogen fuel here.
At the beginning of January this year, the 1,300 standard cubic meters per hour water electrolysis hydrogen production project was successfully commissioned. "The project uses fishery-photovoltaic complementary photovoltaic power generation as a green power supply, and reclaimed water after urban sewage treatment as a water source, and the high-purity green hydrogen prepared for hydrogen refueling stations, forming a closed loop of the whole industrial chain of green hydrogen energy production, storage and processing in the freight field, and creating a model for the construction of distributed integrated hydrogen energy stations. The relevant person in charge of Rongcheng Iron and Steel Group said.
Since the completion and commissioning of Tianjin's first hydrogen transportation demonstration application scenario in August 2021, as of February 8 this year, Rongcheng Iron and Steel Group's hydrogen heavy trucks have refueled about 1,300 tons of hydrogen, with a transportation mileage of more than 10 million kilometers and a reduction of nearly 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide.
Tianjin has initially formed a new model of demonstration and application with Tianjin Port as the core scenario, relying on the hydrogen energy demonstration industrial park, and "car-station-scenery-park" linkage. At the hydrogen production end, two hydrogen refueling mother stations have been built, with a production capacity of 3,800 tons of high-purity hydrogen for vehicles. At the hydrogen refueling end, 11 hydrogen refueling stations have been built. In terms of expanding application scenarios, Tianjin adheres to the promotion of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in a market-oriented manner, and has promoted 500 hydrogen forklifts and 350 hydrogen heavy trucks, leading the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration in terms of operating mileage of hydrogen energy heavy trucks.
From R&D to the transformation of achievements, from energy to application landing, from key supporting to vehicle product ......After years of layout cultivation and multiple rounds of iterative upgrading, the entire industrial chain in the field of hydrogen energy in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei has been basically connected, injecting new momentum into the construction of a modern industrial system and the promotion of high-quality development in the three places.
Beijing**Reporter Cao Zheng, Tianjin**Reporter Wu Qiaojun, Hebei**Reporter Gong Xianyun)
Heqing News Network Editor Zhang Jiayi |Channel Editor-in-Chief Geng Shuo |Channel producer Li Yuan.