An Introduction of Honda's H2 Stations and Fueling Without Grounding Cable

摘要

Honda delivered a fuel cell vehicle, the FCX, to the City of Los Angeles in 2002 as the world's first fully certified daily use fuel cell vehicle. Since then, seventeen FCXs have been delivered in America. Honda has also been developing small scale hydrogen stations at its R&D facility in Torrance, CA. First a solar powered electrolysis Hydrogen Refueling Station (HRS) was installed in 2001. Next, Honda developed an energy supply system for the whole house which is called the "Home Energy Station" (HES) in 2003. HES generates hydrogen from natural gas and supplies hydrogen for the FCX, as well as electricity and hot water for the home. HES was developed through cooperative research and development with Plug Power Inc. Hydrogen, which is used for fuel in the FCX, has the characteristic of being easy to ignite. Due to this characteristic, during refueling, the static electricity from the vehicle body, which can be an ignition source, must be removed. Current industry practice is to connect a grounding cable to the vehicle to remove the static electricity from the vehicle body, separate from the refueling hose, before connecting the refueling hose. However, this complex procedure is not user-friendly. Honda researched methods for removing static electricity through the tires without the use of a ground cable. Our research started by calculating the minimum grounding resistance required to remove static electricity ( < 100MΩ). Next, many measurements were taken of the grounding resistance of an FCX (and other vehicles) through the tires on various surfaces. Two favorable fueling pad surfaces were found to be conductive paint on asphalt and concrete. These two conductive surfaces were applied to the two hydrogen stations at Honda R&D Americas campus in Torrance, CA. After application, the separate grounding cable connection became unnecessary, and as a result, safe and user-friendly refueling became possible.