Infrastructure requirements

In this section, the different components required for using hydrogen in various systemic environments are viewed as a network of infrastructure that has to be convenient and feasible as judged by technical and economic analysis. In particular, the additional components required to coimect the system components are identified and assessed. 

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Historically, the electric power industry was characterized as being a natural monopoly. Natural monopolies typically occur in industries with veiyi large fixed capital costs and relatively low operating costs. The cost characteristics of these industries tend to make them the most efficient producers in a given regional market. However, since these natural monopolies face no competition, they have the ability, if left unchecked, to charge prices that could be considerably above costs. Industries with large infrastructure requirements, such as telecommunications, water... 

Figure 32.2 Infrastructure required for integrated health care. Reproduced with permission from Threshold of Innovation (2005). IBM Business Consulting Services [1]. See color plate.

Hydrogen delivery infrastructure requires sensors for detecting hydrogen leaks and monitoring pipeline integrity. A brief discussion for each type of sensor technology is given in Sections 10.2.4.1 and 10.2.4.2. 

Vidas, H. (2007). Natural Gas Infrastructure Requirements for Hydrogen Production. Energy and Environmental Analysis. Presentation at the USDOE Hydrogen Analysis Deep Dive meeting. San Antonio, TX, March 22, 2007. 

The development of cost-effective hydrogen and fuel cells technologies and infrastructure requires time, public and private sector investment, and technology breakthroughs to achieve commercial maturity and market penetration. Many IEA Member countries have already embarked on this effort in close co-operation with industry. Many others are in the process of revising and reinforcing their research and development strategies. 

Kharat, D.K. (1996) Electrothermal chemical gun concepts, methodology and infrastructure requirements. Proc. Conf. on Propulsion Technology for Hypevelocity Guns, June 13-14, 1996, Institute of Armament Technology (IAT), Pune, India, pp. 6-24. 

Infrastructure Does the system or system modification/change I mpact multiple or company-wide functions, or is new infrastructure required ... 

Invariably the analytical method developer is required to make compromises between the amount and complexity of the sample processing and the separating power, selectivity, and other attributes of the chromatographic or nonchromatographic determination. These compromises are often strongly influenced by the projected cost and time required for various method options and by the desired quality, detail, and reliability of the results. Major issues usually are the availability of laboratory or field equipment and instrumentation, the experience and skill of the staff in using the equipment, and other laboratory or field infrastructure required to complete the analyses of the samples. Most research and standard analytical methods contain many compromises that may not be clearly defined in the method description, but should be understood by the user. 

The kind of manufacture, transportation, and distribution infrastructure required to support a hydrogen-based fuel cell vehicle will be tied directly to the form of hydrogen used on board the vehicle. For example, on-board storage of molecular hydrogen allows a broad spectrum of raw material precursors to manufacture hydrogen. With a chemical carrier, however, molecular hydrogen may not be needed, and the manufacture, transportation, distribution, and storage systems would be quite different. 

Turner compared renewable energy and coal with carbon sequestration and explained that he prefers a renewable energy source because coal resources are finite and it takes energy to sequester carbon. To modify or build a new energy infrastructure requires money and energy—and that energy must come from existing resources. 

The far left part of the spectrum deals with the control hardware and infrastructure required to operate a plant. We need to assemble the proper types of control valves and process measurements (for temperature, flow, pressure, composition, etc.). These are the sensory devices of the plant and are essential for any control system to function. Any control strategy, no matter how clever, will have severe difficulties without the right measurements and valves in the process. An Instrument Society of America (ISA) publication catalog (67 Alexander Drive, P.O. Box 12277, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709) contains many references that deal with control hardware. 

Because of the large investments in the hardware and software infrastructure required for HTS, to replace the primary screening in HTS by virtual screening, followed by the validation of a relatively small number of hits in experimental screening is seen as a valuable alternative (Fig. 2c). However, this task is only feasible if either information about protein structure or reference ligands is available (33). In addition to the physically available in-house collection, virtual screening can include... 

Development is the preparation the facilities, equipment, and infrastructure required for extraction of the valuable mineral material. It includes land acquisition, equipment selection and specification, inlraslruclure and surface facilities design and construction, environmental planning and permitting, and initial mine planning. 

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