Young Bros. picked to test hydrogen fuel cell on barge

Interisland shipping company Young Bros. Ltd. has been chosen to host a federally funded demonstration project that will test the effectiveness of hydrogen fuel cells as a replacement for diesel generators in a maritime setting.

Sandia National Laboratories picked Young Bros. to test the hydrogen fuel cell technology after completing a feasibility study last year that looked at more than a half-dozen ports in Hawaii and on the West Coast.

The mobile 120-kilowatt fuel cell designed by Sandia will be mounted inside a 20-foot shipping container, which can be loaded onto a barge or moved anywhere in the harbor where auxiliary power is needed, according Young Bros. officials.

The primary use of the fuel cell will be to provide electricity to refrigerated containers that Young Bros. transports interisland by barge, said Joe Pratt, project manager for Sandia National Laboratories. Sandia engineers are designing the unit, which will be brought to Hawaii in early 2015 and provided to Young Bros. for six months.

The shipper will be able to swap out an existing diesel-fired generator on one of its barges with one powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, Pratt said. Both the diesel and hydrogen units are housed inside 20-foot containers and occupy the same amount of deck space.

"There are a lot of lessons we can learn from the Hawaii project," Pratt said. "No one has ever built this kind of customer unit for this purpose."

The biggest unknown at this point will be obtaining the hydrogen necessary to power the fuel cell, Pratt said. One possible supplier is the military, which has hydrogen production facilities at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and Schofield Barracks.

The facilities extract hydrogen from water using electrolysis. Hydrogen-powered motors are fueled by a chemical reaction in a fuel cell between hydrogen and air to create electricity.

Sandia, a Lockheed Martin subsidiary based in New Mexico, received funding from the U.S. Departments of Energy and Transportation for the hydrogen fuel cell project. Sandia will pay for the equipment while Young Bros. will pay for the hydrogen.

It is estimated that Young Bros. will be able to cut its fuel costs compared with diesel if it can get the hydrogen for between $4 and $5 a kilogram, Pratt said. The move also would allow Young Bros. to reduce its emissions.

"Environmental stewardship is an important aspect of Young Bros.’ business, so we’re pleased to be part of this clean-energy initiative," said Roy Cata­lani, vice president of strategic planning and government affairs at Young Bros.