Flush, then fill up: Japan taps sewage to fuel hydrogen-powered cars

LA Times, Julie Makinen, July 31, 2016

Does the future of driving start with flushing your toilet?

When Mutsuro Yuji, chief of the central sewage plant here in this southern Japanese city, first heard about the idea of making hydrogen from biogas — the combination of methane and carbon dioxide produced by the breakdown of stinky matter — he was skeptical. “I thought it was a joke,” he says.


An attendant prepares to fill up a Toyota Mirai at a Fukuoka sewage treatment plant, which is creating hydrogen from biogas. (Julie Makinen / Los Angeles Times)

But after a $12-million investment from Japan’s government, plus research, engineering, design and building work by Mitsubishi, Toyota and Kyushu University, Yuji is no longer laughing. Starting late last year, drivers of vehicles like the Toyota Mirai and Honda Clarity have been able to roll up to the sewage plant and power up their hydrogen fuel cell cars at what you might call the world’s first toilet-to-tank filling station.

The station is working only 12 hours per day but already is making enough hydrogen to fill 65 cars daily — and that could grow to 600 if all the biogas at the plant was harnessed.

After years of fits and starts, Japan is in the midst of a major push to move hydrogen-powered cars off the drawing board and into driveways. The government this year has doubled its funding for fuel cell vehicle subsidies, construction of filling stations and hydrogen energy farms to about $280 million, up from $120 million last year. Meanwhile, carmakers including Toyota are ramping up production plans for the zero-emission vehicles...snip

...In the U.S., most hydrogen is produced from natural gas. But a 2014 study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that biogas from waste water treatment plants, landfills, animal manure and industrial facilities could be used as a major source of hydrogen — enough to support 11 million fuel cell vehicles per year... snip
Read More: http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-japan-hydrogen-cars-sewage-snap-story.html