Green Hydrogen: What’s Really Real in a Gathering of Haters, Hypers, Pettifoggers, Filibusters, and Transformative Technologies Like You’ve Never Ever Seen

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) On June 7, 2021, the US Department of Energy launched the Hydrogen Shot, which got kinda mixed up with the Moderna and Pfizer shots in the Battle for The Nation’s Attention that erupts on Facebook each morning. So, if you missed it, don’t feel alone.

It’s the first Shot in a series the DOE is calling its Energy Earthshots, and if the term sounds vaguely familiar, it’s probably because, over in the UK, Sir David Attenborough and the Duke of Cambridge are pushing the term with The Earthshot Prize. Here. the DOE Energy Earthshots Initiative aims to accelerate breakthroughs of more abundant, affordable, and reliable clean energy solutions within the decade.)

If there’s confusion about the origin of the term, there’s no confusion about the goals. In vigorous, blunt terms — the way we like our goals in the land of Uncle Sam — the Hydrogen Shot seeks to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen by 80% to $1 per 1 kilogram in 1 decade, which they call a 1-1-1 (presumably because doing something by 2030, nine years away, might have been otherwise described as a ‘9-1-1’). DOE also set some goals for 2025 for clean hydrogen, which is four years away — and, so, you may be in the market for a 4-1-1.

What is it?

Hydrogen, a colorless gas, comes in more ‘colors’ than a starter box of Crayola Crayons, and pretty much everyone calls the hydrogen they make “clean”.

Since we’re a Digest, and sworn to brevity, today we’ll focus down on green hydrogen.

As the DOE points out, there’s reason to focus on hydrogen, despite the hype. They say: “With approximately 10 million metric tons of hydrogen currently produced in the United States each year, the primary demand for hydrogen today is for petroleum refining and ammonia production. However, hydrogen can be used across multiple sectors to enable zero or near-zero emissions in other chemical and industrial processes, integrated clean energy systems, and transportation. Emerging hydrogen markets within these sectors include data centers, ports, steel manufacturing, and medium- and heavy-duty trucks.”

So, the demand is there, the supply is in question — so let’s look at the problems, the solutions, and some technology that’s around the corner.

So, what are the problems?

They are two. First, the high capex for green hydrogen projects. Second, hydrogen lacks the pipelines we have for water, electricity, natural gas and oil. So, hydrogen struggles to compete in the fuel cell markets with electrons, because of distribution, and with fossil-fuel based hydrogen in industrial feedstock markets because of cost.

What are the solutions?

Again they are two, in the near-term. Novel technology will provide some tasty alternatives and we’ll get to those in a minute. But, for the here and now:

1. Use biobased steam methane reforming to compete with oil If water splitting is expensive, why not use renewable methane. Simply a matter of connecting more and more upgraded biogas production to the natural gas pipeline network, and use conventional refineries and existing process to make hydrogen.

2. Competing with electricity. As one wag put it, “why transport green electricity to make hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles, when you can simply use the electricity to power the car in the first place?” It’s a good question, in some cases the answer comes down to storage — you can store an awful lot more energy in liquid form than putting electrons in batteries.

What is hydrogen’s mobility selling point?

Extended range is nice, low weight is nice, more leg room and less battery is nice. Design? Not really.

It’s the re-fuel. A hydrogen pump shovels in 72 miles per minute (380 miles of range in a 5-minute re-fuel. A Tesla Supercharger transits a measly 13 minutes of range per minute. And that’s top of the line for electrics, and they don’t tell you hast fast a battery wears under supercharging conditions.

You can make back the money you lavish on a high-experience vehicle, but you never make back the time spent standing around re-fueling or re-charging.

Alternative tech

There are quite a few interesting ideas floating around about how to beat the cost of water-splitting or steam methane reformation. Some of the relate back to photolysis, which is splitting water using photons rather than using photons to generate electricity and splitting water via electrolysis.

One other approach is well worth a look, that’s been on the mid-burner in R&D circles the last decade or so when new approaches began to bubble up at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. The company developing those ideas is Nzyme2HC.

Nzyme2HC technology makes H2 from acidic industrial waste (steel, mining, other), and utilizes a hydrogenase enzyme as a catalyst, which — Zounds! – is much cheaper than platinum.

The claim for production at scale is that the cost of production would crest under $1/kg. Earthshot achieved!

Well, not so fast, more work is needed here. Various improvements will be needed to keep the process operating continuously with industrial acidic water as the source of protons, and among other next steps, testing a novel membrane to pre‐treat the waste water before utilizing it in the electroreactor.

Unlike steam reforming of methane, you don’t need to use fossil fuels or find a kindly RNMG project nearby. You don’t need the scads of energy that electrolysis needs to split water sans catalyst, and you don’t need to build a farm to produce algae or other biomass to split hydrogen. READ MORE