California May Look At Hydrogen Produced from Sewage

August 30th, 2016 by Fiedler Group

Following a $12-million investment from the Japanese government, plus research, engineering, and design work from Mitsubishi, Toyota, and others, drivers in Japan have been able to fuel their hydrogen fuel cell vehicles using sewage.

This advancement is particularly of interest to California, where the hydrogen fueling infrastructure is near approaching a commercially-viable level.

While Japan and Germany both trailblaze the hydrogen energy fuel stations (they have 80 and 50 stations respectively) California now has 20.

Currently in the United States, most hydrogen fuel is produced using natural gas, so this breakthrough seeing the potential in sewage as fuel may now be able to support 11 million fuel cell vehicles a year using waste water treatment plants, landfills, manure, and industrial facilities.

Due to its size alone, Southern California is the nation’s top region for potential to produce hydrogen fuel from its landfills (Los Angeles is ranked number one and Orange County is ranked number two).

The state of California is adopting hydrogen fuel cell vehicles faster than expected with 10,500 fuel cell cars expected to be on the roads by 2018 and 34,000 by the end of 2021, according to a report from the California Air Resources Board.

In fact, the pace of adoption is so high that the Air Resources Board has warned the currently funded hydrogen stations may not be sufficient to support 2018 demand.

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