Colour-Coded Hydrogen

Hydrogen production from fossil fuel sources, today, is the most common source of the gas as fuel. Colour coding specifies how dirty the hydrogen source is. Hydrogen produced from natural gas without carbon capture is called grey. Black and brown hydrogen comes from coal with no carbon capture. Blue hydrogen from grey, black and brown indicates carbon emissions are captured up to 80% in its production.  Turquoise hydrogen is produced through methane pyrolysis with solid carbon waste as the byproduct. The carbon can be stored or used to make carbon fibre and fuel.

Clean Hydrogen

Clean hydrogen is green. It is produced using renewable electrical energy. Electrolyzers separate hydrogen from water producing zero carbon emissions. Other designations for clean hydrogen are yellow for solar energy, and pink, red, and purple for nuclearNaturally occurring hydrogen found underground is designated as white. Then there is hydrogen produced from ammonia.

The Ammonia-Hydrogen Story

Ammonia is composed of one molecule of nitrogen and three of hydrogen (NH3). Ammonia is a source of green hydrogen when renewable energy is used to produce it. But ammonia isn’t being produced today to generate hydrogen for the most part.

Most ammonia is far from green. According to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2018 ammonia contributed 620 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere or 1.3% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s because ammonia comes from combining hydrogen harvested from steam-reform processes that use natural gas and coal. The hydrogen is then combined with nitrogen from the atmosphere to make ammonia.

Approximately 80% of ammonia produced gets used in nitrogen-based fertilizers. The balance is used in chemical production. Demand is expected to increase by 40% in 2050 driven largely by fertilizer needs.

Ammonia is not a friendly substance. Exposure to it can be toxic. It can cause lung damage if you breathe it in. Exposure can burn skin and eyes. Ingested it can cause vomiting, convulsions, comas, and even death. Handling it requires considerable precautions.

Hydrogen from ammonia can be zero-emission. Ammonia direct combustion can also be zero-emission.

Why do the former when ammonia can by itself be a fuel?

Hydrogen has immediate advantages. It is compatible with today’s fuel-cell technologies. Ammonia is not. Compressed liquid hydrogen can be burned in internal combustion engines. Compressed ammonia cannot. Hydrogen can be used instead of coal in the production of steel, aluminum, and concrete. Ammonia at present cannot.

Ammonia has several advantages over hydrogen. It is 1.7 times more energy-dense than hydrogen in a liquid state. It is less inflammable. When transported ammonia is more stable. Liquid hydrogen can easily turn into gas and escape unless stored at very low temperatures and under high pressure. That’s why ammonia is often used as a means to transport and deliver hydrogen as an alternative carbon-free fuel.

In Thailand, Singapore, the European Union and Japan, Siemens Energy, Mitsubishi Power and GE Vernova in partnership with IHI are developing demonstration ammonia-fired thermal power plants. The GE-IHI partnership has built a 2-megawatt gas turbine that runs on 100% liquid ammonia.

At PowerGen International 2024 earlier this year, Jeffrey Goldmeer from GE Vernova stated, “Ammonia offers a new pathway for decarbonization and could become especially valuable in LNG-dependent markets in Asia.”

Will ammonia-burning vehicles grace our roads in the future? More than likely not for some time. We will see hydrogen-powered vehicles, however, with the gas derived from ammonia. But ammonia-power will need vehicles with ammonia-resistant engine technology that currently doesn’t exist.

In pursuit of maximizing hydrogen derived from ammonia, the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) recently revealed that a team from there had developed a process for producing carbon-emission-free 99.97% pure hydrogen for use in fuel cells or as liquid hydrogen to power vehicles on land, in the air and on the water.

We’ve been using gasoline and diesel to power cars and trucks for more than a century. It was Henry Ford who popularized the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine (ICE) early in the 20th century. And Rudolf Diesel in the late 19th century gave us the engine named after him. Before these two, steam-power moved trains and steam-powered cars persisted all the way to the mid-1920s before this form of transportation was quashed by ICE technology and mass production.

ICE technology burns fossil fuels which we know add greenhouse gasses (GHG) to the atmosphere. In small numbers, using ICE for transportation would never have been an environmental problem. But gas-powered cars cover the planet to the tune of 1.4 billion in 2022. Environmental regulation of emissions has produced innovations. Catalytic converters, unleaded gasoline, and biofuels have reduced emissions per vehicle. But the explosion in the number of cars on the planet has offset those technological improvements.

Today, the impact of gas-powered cars is profound with between 80% and 90% of the total environmental impact coming from burning fuel each time you step on the gas. And particulate matter from partially-burned gasoline and diesel is responsible for 30,000 deaths per year from respiratory complications.

Climate change from adding GHGs to the atmosphere is pointing a finger, not just at fossil fuel producers, but also at transportation with the environmental impact of driving seen as an area where technological innovation can help reduce global warming. Hence the move to electric vehicles (EVs) and alternatives to gasoline and diesel fuels to move us around.

EVs Currently Have the Lead in Replacing ICE Cars

Car manufacturers like Tesla, Ford, Nissan and a bevy of Chinese companies have been cashing in on public interest to go green and slash personal carbon emissions. In the past, many false starts plagued EV development. General Motors launched the EV1 in 1996 and Honda in 1997. Neither of these survived in the marketplace. It took a new manufacturer, Tesla, to put the EV front and centre with automobile purchasers.

Now EVs appear to be the natural successors to ICE cars. Even accounting for charging, EVs deliver a lower carbon cost than gasoline-powered vehicle alternatives. The carbon efficiency of EVs is improving over time as well. And as we move towards a power grid featuring more renewable energy sources, the carbon produced to charge EVs will diminish. 

EVs are technically complex-looking and laden vehicles, and despite all the onboard gadgets and goodies produce fewer GHGs over their full lifetime when compared to ICE cars. Their manufacturing may be more carbon intensive, but their operations quickly offset this when drivers forgo the gasoline and diesel pump. 

Detractors of EVs point out that disposing of batteries can be ecologically harmful. However, as many of the current EVs on the road reach their end of life, the electric car battery recycling industry is ramping up. Older batteries are even getting an extended life when used in battery storage packs used in homes to provide electricity when there are power grid interruptions. And as more EVs are on the road, there is a growing demand for the recycling and reusing of EV parts and the materials that can be extracted from old batteries.

Then there are two outstanding concerns: range anxiety which appears to be coming to an end, and the lack of an adequate charging infrastructure which through the programs being funded in the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act should soon be addressed. 

Businesses are demonstrating they are fully behind the EV transition. Fleets are switching to EVs. Corporate sustainability and ESG credentials are becoming entrenched in business operations. Impact measurement and management (IMM) software is helping track sustainability improvements.

Can Hydrogen Give EVs a Run for the Money?

In recent years, Japanese automakers Honda and Toyota have invested in hydrogen-powered fuel cell cars. Hydrogen fuel cell EVs have a driving range of up to 500 kilometres (310 miles). Refilling a fuel cell car takes no more time than putting gas or diesel into an ICE vehicle. That too is a big plus when compared to battery-powered EVs that can take much longer to fully recharge. 

Detractors of hydrogen point to the volatility of the fuel. They are mistaken as Toyota’s Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell model has demonstrated. Hydrogen fuel cells use compressed hydrogen which is converted to electricity. There are no GHG emissions other than water vapour. A hydrogen fuel-cell car is as carbon efficient in production as other EVs. And its operational footprint is zero carbon.

There are two remaining challenges for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles becoming a major competitor to EVs. The first is sourcing hydrogen which currently gets produced from natural gas, a GHG. But this is changing as electrolyzers become more common and use water and even saltwater to source hydrogen. And the second challenge is the lack of a hydrogen fueling infrastructure. Only Iceland today has a significant number of hydrogen stations which fuel its growing fleet of fuel-cell vehicles.

A Final Word

Because of Tesla EVs have gained popularity in the last decade. And because people are becoming more knowledgeable about climate-related issues, they are looking at EVs in greater numbers. So EVs have caught on and with recent price wars fueled by more manufacturers getting into the business, we should see significant growth in their use.

For hydrogen, the uphill climb to reach numbers that will make fuel-cell-powered EVs viable is steeper. But late into the race doesn’t mean the fuel cell EV will succumb to the same market dynamics that ended the Stanley Steamer.    

That’s why researchers have been trying to develop technologies to harvest hydrogen from water, a zero-emission alternative to current technologies that extract the gas from fossil fuel natural gas.

When you look around this planet, where is there lots of water? The answer is obvious, the oceans that cover more than 70% of the planet. So one would think, to harvest hydrogen from this vast resource would be a no-brainer. But there are problems in developing practical, durable, hydrogen extraction technologies from seawater.

Using electrolysis, where electricity is applied to electrodes placed in water, is the current method for separating hydrogen and oxygen molecules. There is an entire industry building electrolyzers which produce hydrogen this way. The water has to be fresh and purified because any mineral contamination can corrode the electrodes and shorten the life of the equipment. Is it economic to harvest hydrogen this way? If the electricity being used by the electrolyzers comes from air-polluting sources, then the hydrogen produced cannot be described as green. And if the energy input costs are greater than what can be derived from the hydrogen when burned, then there is little point in producing it.

Then there is the saltwater problem. Saltwater contains lots of minerals and mostly salt. When electrolysis happens in saltwater, it quickly corrodes the electrodes. That means conventional electrolyzers will not work for long when using saltwater as the hydrogen source.

There is a two-step process to harvest hydrogen from seawater, The first step involves desalinating the water. Then conventional electrolyzers can be used to harvest the hydrogen. Why this is not being done commercially is because the extra step makes the process cost prohibitive. That’s why research teams from universities around the world have been looking for technology breakthroughs. They have come in fits and starts.

In 2010, a team at the University of California, Berkeley, tried by inventing an electrocatalyst made from a molybdenum-oxo complex which when combined with a mercury electrode produced hydrogen. Nothing commercially applicable came out of this invention.

In 2019, a Stanford team made an electrode from nickel-iron hydroxide and nickel sulphide that harvested hydrogen from seawater. It worked for 1,000 hours before the electrodes corroded.

A different approach from a team of researchers from Nanjing Tech University in China just recently announced appears to be quite promising. They have created a membrane-based seawater electrolyzer to harvest hydrogen and published their findings in November 2022 in Nature.

In the paper, the team describes the challenges that have plagued all prior attempts to harvest hydrogen from seawater and described their strategy to overcome the corrosion issue. Instead of putting the electrodes into seawater, they invented a concentrated potassium hydroxide electrolyte solution in which to place them. They also created a fluorine-rich porous membrane to separate the seawater from the electrolyte. The membrane blocked the seawater from interacting with the electrodes and only allowed water vapour to penetrate through it. The beginning of this article illustrates how the exchange is produced.

With this new technique, the Nanjing team has been able to demonstrate stable hydrogen harvesting without corrosion. Its tests using a current density of 250 milliamperes per square centimetre with electricity coming from renewable sources ran for over 3,200 hours continuously producing no corrosion of the electrodes.

The inventors believe this technology can be adapted on an industrial scale which would mean electrolyzers for processing seawater. It also believes operational costs should be similar to current freshwater-using electrolyzers. Another advantage of their invention is it can be used with other water-based sources since only water vapour interacts with the electrodes. That means even wastewater and other contaminated sources of effluent can be used for hydrogen harvesting.

What’s the upside to developing a hydrogen from seawater energy model? The potential of capturing ocean hydrogen can give the planet an almost unlimited source of 100% zero-emission energy for powering manufacturing processes, fueling transportation and heating and cooling homes and buildings. It is another step in moving us away from our current fossil fuel energy dependency.

Mars Food Australia, the subsidiary of the global food giant, is using HERO® to help decarbonize its processes. The 18-month pilot project is the first step in developing alternative heat sources for the food industry. Bill Heague who is General Manager of Mars in Australia states, “Thermal energy is crucial to the business of cooking food and this technology has the capability to create limitless heat without any combustion and zero emissions.”

But this is only the beginning because Star has plans to introduce the technology into legacy coal-fired power plants to retrofit existing generators to run on green hydrogen. In an interview with Bloomberg Green, Andrew Horvath, Chairman of Star Scientific states, “We think there are a lot of opportunities in existing steam turbines that have some longevity…Why would you throw them away? They’re already connected to the grid.” He cites the example of Japan where 70% of its existing turbines still have 40 years of life left.

It is using hydrogen without burning it. That’s what sets Star Scientific’s technology apart from others trying to harness the combustible gas. The patented catalyst heats in the presence of hydrogen and oxygen to reach temperatures of 700 Celsius (1,292 Fahrenheit).

For energy utilities with billions invested in legacy power plants, the ability to leverage its assets rather than demolish them has considerable appeal. The industry recognizes the need to commit to net-zero and the challenge to achieve this is no mean feat.

Many utilities are trying to use fossil fuels and carbon capture in combination to produce what is called blue hydrogen which can then be burned to power steam turbines. One such power plant is the Wabash River Generating Station, a 972.7 Megawatt coal-fired power plant operated by Durke Energy Indiana. In partnership with Honeywell UOP, it hopes to produce 300 Megawatts of zero-emission energy from this facility by 2024 while capturing 1.65 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually.

Australia’s new government is proposing that a proposed gas-fired thermal power plant in New South Wales currently under development be converted to green hydrogen. Refitting to burn hydrogen rather than natural gas which is methane (CH4) isn’t just like switching from unleaded to premium gas in your car. The two gasses when burned do not produce the same amount of energy. More hydrogen fuel will be needed to yield the same amount of energy needed to drive the plant’s steam turbines.

General Electric has been working with hydrogen for more than three decades. It currently has an inventory of more than 100 gas turbines running on a mixture of fuels combining hydrogen with fossil fuels. It provides U.S. utilities with a hydrogen and CO2 emissions calculator to answer questions related to converting existing power plants.

The big difference between Star Scientific and other players in the emerging hydrogen power plant sweepstakes is that the former isn’t igniting the gas to create heat. For those of us who have read the story of the Hindenberg 1937 fire, there is something both novel and reassuring about a technology that can deliver heat without combustion. I would think the utility companies of the world with legacy coal-fired and natural-gas power plants would be knocking on Star Scientific’s door.

It was estimated that more than 169 million ICE vehicles were on the world’s roads in 2021 and that over 2 billion ICE were being used globally, many in non-transportation applications. For comparison, 2021 numbers for battery and fuel-cell-powered vehicles climbed to approximately 11 million, or in other words, a very small fraction.

Current ICE technology has lifespans that range between 10 and 30 years depending on the application. What this means for the planet is that emissions-producing ICE technology is to remain with us well past the 2050 net-zero emission date unless governments around the world legislate them into oblivion.

What if ICE engines could be converted to run on green hydrogen? There are many challenges in answering this question.

Currently, hydrogen produced from green sources involves the use of renewable energy technologies or fossil-fuel burning thermal energy with CC. That makes the hydrogen pretty expensive. Nevertheless, research by automotive companies is ongoing to produce a hydrogen-powered ICE.

One of the companies is Toyota which has built an experimental hydrogen-burning ICE-powered car. Toyota’s work with hydrogen has produced the first commercial hydrogen fuel-cell-powered car, the Mirai. Comparing the efficiencies and practicalities of both technologies leads to the immediate conclusion that hydrogen fuel cells are a much better option.

Why? Because injecting hydrogen gas into an ICE requires modifications to improve both the efficiency and power yield. Hydrogen is less efficient than gasoline or diesel when burned. A burn byproduct is nitrogen oxides which can be removed using catalytic converters, an added expense. Then there is fuel efficiency. To get the same mileage as a comparable ICE-powered vehicle, a hydrogen ICE would require a heavy and large pressurized tank to contain the gas making the vehicle somewhat impractical. In comparison, a hydrogen fuel-cell-powered vehicle would require a manageable hydrogen tank to feed the fuel cell stack to generate electricity. The only emission would be water.

Having said all of this, this week a British inventor, Steve Berrow, in a press release states he and his colleagues have invented a hydrogen-burning fuel system which could be a means to convert existing ICE vehicles.

Called the Berrow-Zeice System, Berrow states it can be adapted for any ICE, big or small, burning diesel or gasoline. In the release, he states his patent-pending technology “is truly a global gamechanger for the fight against climate change,” and adds, “our technology can…reduce the damaging impact of toxic emissions and have a significant positive impact on public health and the environment at large.”

The Berrow-Zeice System features no air intake and no exhaust. It emits only water. Berrow is looking for investors to put his invention into commercial production. He can be reached at [email protected].

Just how complicated is the process of converting ICE technology to burn hydrogen? I watched a video to get a better idea of the complexity. I’m sending this posting to Steve Berrow by email with access to the video link to get him to comment.

“Hydrogen is expected to play a critical role in enabling the energy transition. Hydrogen is possibly one of the best options for large-scale decarbonization in segments such as transport, industry, and buildings, which is a key driver of hydrogen adoption.”

What are the obstacles to hydrogen’s future?

One I addressed in my last posting about hydrogen in the past week. The cost to harvest from green energy compared to fossil fuel alternatives like natural gas remains high. As a result, hydrogen at present is uncompetitive for the remainder of the decade unless governments effect policies and businesses make the concerted effort is to increase investments in it.

Governments can implement policies similar akin to those adopted to support the existing fossil fuel industry: things like research grants and cash prizes, taking stakes in nascent research, commercial pilots and projects, and more. The money currently spent on fossil fuel subsidies can be redirected to low-carbon-emission hydrogen production instead.

As for public perception, there is the Hindenburg, the disaster that happened back in May of 1937. After the fire that brought down the airship hydrogen was seen as far too volatile for public safety.

The next impediment to widespread use is related to the conversion of legacy heating and cooling in buildings that currently use natural gas, coal, or oil. We are talking about tens of millions of structures and hundreds of millions of family homes around the world.

Then there is transportation which today relies almost exclusively on fossil fuels. A growing electrification movement is underway but it is still only a fraction of the total.

And finally, there are the primary industries like steel, cement, and aluminum that today use coal and natural gas in their production processes.

That’s a lot of change and a lot of money that needs to be spent to substitute hydrogen for existing legacy energy fuels and infrastructure.

Who Today is Doing Hydrogen Right?

For an answer to this question, I went to the Hydrogen Council, a global initiative of companies invested in making hydrogen a critical component for the transition of the world’s economy from carbon-based energy to green energy alternatives.

Today much of the hydrogen consumed annually comes from grey sources. It is derived from fossil fuels that contribute to global warming. That’s not doing hydrogen right.

What the Council envisions as a net-zero 2050 strategy is the rapid scaling in the production of blue and green hydrogen. Blue hydrogen is sourced from fossil fuel production that incorporates carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) or utilization (CCUS) technologies. The CO2 is either pumped underground for permanent storage or used as a product where it is inserted into a product like cement.

Green hydrogen comes from electrolysis powered by renewable, zero-emission electricity to harvest the gas from water or water vapour without carbon emissions.

At COP-26, the Council published a Hydrogen for Net Zero report. In it, it provides a path that removes 80 Gigatons of CO2 from global future emissions by adopting hydrogen in production, transportation, and infrastructure projects. The report describes over 520 such projects that include 90 Gigawatts of electrolyzer production, and $160 billion in direct investments already underway globally.

The frontloading of funding support over the decade, states the report, should scale green hydrogen production to bring its cost per kilogram down to make it competitive with fossil fuels. But the full potential of the hydrogen transition will remain unrealizable despite all of the projects described above without a funding gap of $540 billion in new investments being realized to bring the total to $700 billion by 2030. So where should the $540 billion be spent?

The Council has issued a policy toolbox that covers 48 proposals for production, importation, and the export of hydrogen. It addresses the retrofit and repurposing of existing natural gas infrastructure and the building of new dedicated transmission and storage systems for hydrogen. It includes government policies to develop a hydrogen infrastructure backbone to connect large-scale production to demand sites.

As much as I found the Council’s information useful, I still wanted to find out what countries are at the forefront of making hydrogen a key part of the global energy transition. I turned to another source, the H2 Bulletin. Among the countries and programs listed, Japan and the European Union appeared to be leading the pack.

But one country that I knew was doing hydrogen in a big way wasn’t listed in the H2 Bulletin. That is Iceland, a nation that is being described in some publications as the “Kuwait of the North” when it comes to hydrogen. That’s because the government of Iceland has an announced intention to become the first fully-operational national hydrogen economy by 2030. And it has the means to do it with access to copious amounts of zero-emission geothermal energy, and abundant water to draw upon for its electrolyzer to convert to hydrogen.  The rest of us can watch and learn.

Australia Announces 10 Gigawatt Green Hydrogen Project

Australia’s Northern Territory is planning to harvest water from the air and electrolyze it to produce hydrogen. The total cost of the project is expected to exceed $10 billion US. The developer of the project, which has been given the name Desert Bloom, is Aqua Aerem.

The challenge is two-fold. The Northern Territory is a very dry place. So how can you build a facility to extract hydrogen from water when you need 9 litres of it to get one kilogram of the gas?

Aqua Aerem has developed water-making technology powered by renewable solar energy with the only byproduct, air. The Desert Bloom Project will begin with an 8 Megawatt test facility utilizing four of the company’s Hydrogen Production Units (see image below), each a self-contained module with solar panels, and a parabolic solar thermal heater to capture water from the air and extract hydrogen. Phase Two will expand to 200 units to produce 400 Megawatts and eventually thousands of modules will be deployed to reach the 10 Gigawatt capacity goal.

Aqua Aerem is Latin for “water air.” The hydrogen is destined for the Northern Territory’s power company, Territory Generation which plans to use the gas for a powerplant that will generate electricity for the township of Tennants Creek.

An existing natural gas pipeline will be converted to transport the gas to the port of Darwin for export to Asia as the project scales up.

How Much Will a Rolls-Royce Fuel Cell Cost?

Knowing how much the car costs, when I heard about Rolls-Royce getting into the fuel-cell business I had to ask the above question. Unveiled at the COP-26 Climate Conference in Glasgow, Rolls-Royce showed off its mtu hydrogen fuel cell capable of generating 150 Kilowatts of electricity or enough to heat and light 10 homes. mtu is a Rolls-Royce brand that includes diesel-powered modular units for power generation. But this version is hydrogen-powered and modular. As a result, it can be deployed in multiple units to power facilities not hooked up to the grid. In ships, several of the units could be deployed and fire up only when demand requires more than one to operate. That’s the flexibility of the modular design. As flexible as a diesel-powered generator, the Rolls-Royce hydrogen mtu will give remote communities an alternative that is greenhouse-gas-emissions-free.

The company hopes to deploy modules in microgrids to support off-the-main grid distributed power. Scalability makes it extremely attractive. But at what price?

Hydrogen Pricing Expected to Decline Dramatically by 2030

The cost of electrolyzers and the proliferation of abundant renewable energy is expected to make green hydrogen cost-competitive by 2030 according to analyst Wood Mackenzie.

Today, the bulk of hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels, particularly coal and natural gas. Designated blue or gray, they are cheaper than green hydrogen to produce. But both produce greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2019, global demand for hydrogen amounted to 70 million tons annually. This is expected to grow dramatically through this decade as hydrogen replaces natural gas in the making of steel, cement, aluminum and other materials.

The key to green hydrogen production costs is the cost of electrolyzers and renewable energy. Already renewable solar and wind are getting cheaper than thermal energy sources.

In the Wood Mackenzie report it notes that 252 Megawatts of green hydrogen projects had been deployed by 2019 and that by 2025, that number was to grow by an additional 3,205 Megawatts, a 1,272% increase.

Currently, green hydrogen is more expensive than comparable fuels including blue and gray hydrogen. But at the current pace of capacity increases, Wood Mackenzie expects the price to drop to $2 per kilogram by 2030, and $1 by 2050 which would make the gas cost-competitive with other energy fuels.

The UCF researchers developed an alternative made from iron with phosphor dual-doped nickel selenide nanoporous film that in initial testing has demonstrated stability and long-duration capability which may prove to be an energy industry gamechanger.

In a July announcement from the University, Yang Yang, Associate Professor in the NanoScience Technology Center is quoted as stating, “This development will open a new window for efficiently producing clean hydrogen fuel from seawater.” He continues, “The seawater electrolysis performance achieved by the dual-doped film far surpasses those of the most recently reported, state-of-the-art electrolysis catalysts and meets the demanding requirements needed for practical application.” In a 200-hour test of the film, it held up producing hydrogen from seawater continuously. The film is not expensive to produce and is scalable for industrial applications.

The hydrogen produced using this nanofilm is classified as green. Electrolysis is the preferred route to go in producing hydrogen because there are zero emissions if the energy source is not fossil-fuel-based. That’s why the green hydrogen classification, as opposed to blue and grey hydrogen, is preferred.

If unfamiliar with these classifications of hydrogen fuels, blue hydrogen gets produced from fossil fuels when the resulting carbon emissions are captured and sequestered. Grey hydrogen produced from fossil fuels allows carbon emissions to get into the atmosphere. The fossil fuel industry, in its greenwashing efforts and to ensure continued profits from developing new fields to harvest, wants the public to buy into hydrogen produced from oil and gas.

In a world turning away from the burning of fossil fuels because of climate change, hydrogen from seawater would be a breakthrough of global significance. Hydrogen is ideal alternative energy for use in transportation, buildings, and homes where it can be used to recharge fuel cells or if compressed used for heating. Hydrogen, as opposed to natural gas, can be used by utilities in power plants as a backup or supplement to renewable energy generation from wind, solar, tidal and wave sources.

Yang’s research team’s expertise in advanced materials with application for use in renewable energy devices, environmental science, and smart electronics is focused on novel cutting-edge technologies that are much needed over this next decade in our fight to keep atmospheric warming from exceeding the 1.5-Celsius threshold established by the IPCC and Paris Climate Agreement and to stabilize the planet’s climate future.

How much would this cost? About $10 billion US per year or less than 0.4% of the State’s current gross domestic product (GDP). The solutions proposed to meet this goal exist either at scale or in demonstration and pilot projects, and among them is converting waste into hydrogen fuel.

California isn’t alone in seeking a waste-to-fuel solution that produces a green-fuel end product. But therein lies the challenge. So far, the cheapest technologies to make hydrogen fuel, a carbon-free alternative to fossil fuels, involves processes that churn out greenhouse gas emissions.

Technologies to Harvest Hydrogen Are Largely Not Green

The LLNL report describes various hydrogen harvesting technologies in its search for negative-emissions end results. But other than hydrogen electrolyzers that are powered by renewable energy sources (hydro, wind, solar and geothermal), none of the methods reported include green hydrogen fuels.

Instead, hydrogen extraction is coming from a variety of sources such as syngas from biomass, natural gas, and methane. Carbon emission problems with these processes do not move the state into the desired negative emissions scenario. This type of hydrogen is classified as gray. Only by adding carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to the post-production process can the classification move closer to green.

Another described process extracts hydrogen using hydrothermal liquefaction. The energy and materials used come from feedstocks of forest and green municipal waste. This hydrogen extraction also produces GHGs and needs added CCS for reclassification to blue, one step short of being fully green.

Another described process uses recovered bio-oils (animal and vegetable fats and the like). It uses fast pyrolysis to convert the rendered oils into non-polluting hydrogen. Even here the process yields GHGs and requires CCS.

LLNL Could Have Looked at Ways2H in Their Own State

Not mentioned in the LLNL report is a hydrogen systems supplier, Ways2H Inc., a Long Beach company that converts waste to hydrogen fuel. This California company announced last week that it was teaming up with Element Two, a U.K. fuel retailer, to implement waste-to-hydrogen refuelling stations throughout the United Kingdom, beginning with deployment in Scotland where it plans to implement 40 sites.

Ways2H recycles municipal solid waste, plastic, sewage sludge and other garbage by using a carbon-neutral process to extract pure hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles or power generators. The company sees unrecyclable plastic as a perfect feedstock for its patented technology which it describes as an advanced thermochemical process producing hydrogen with net zero-carbon output.

In Scotland, Ways2H and Element Two will produce every day up to a metric ton of renewable hydrogen at each of its filling station sites. The plan is to grow to a hydrogen-fuel infrastructure to 2,000 stations across the United Kingdom and the European Union by 2030. The technology has already successfully been deployed at a waste-to-hydrogen plant in Tokyo, Japan.

Element Two and Ways2H see their primary target as the long-haul trucking industry. A fuel-cell-powered rig could conceivably travel 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) between hydrogen refills which would take no longer than pumping diesel or gasoline.

A proposal to build 100 hydrogen-refuelling stations in the works for implementation along the interstate highway system in the U.S. With the Biden administration putting infrastructure money into recharging stations on the interstate system it should be a no-brainer to add hydrogen to the energy mix. Currently, California has 50 working hydrogen refuelling stations. That’s why it was surprising to me that Ways2H was never mentioned in the LLNL report.

Recently I came across a company spun out of Israel’s Technion that claims to have created a way to produce zero-emission green hydrogen using a methodology named E-TAC. Led by Dr. Hen Dotan, a material scientist and engineer, Professor Gideon Grader, advanced ceramic materials and process engineering specialist from the Technion,  and Avner Rothschild, head of Electrochemical Materials and Devices research at the Technion and fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the company, H2PRO, is focused on turning hydrogen into the ideal fuel for a decarbonized world in the 21st century.

Annual hydrogen consumption by industry today amounts to 70 million tons with almost all of it coming from grey hydrogen sources. In other words, hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels in a process that releases carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.

Green hydrogen today is produced by electrolysis, splitting water (H2O) into its hydrogen and oxygen components. The energy needed comes from renewable sources like hydro, wind, and solar to be classified as green. The materials required include expensive membranes that frequently need replacement. And then there is the challenge of keeping the two gases separated. The complexity of this type of production has made green hydrogen cost-prohibitive when compared to other fuels like diesel, gasoline, or liquid natural gas (LNG).

H2PRO has invented a process called E-TAC with the acronym standing for a two-phase approach, the first Electrochemical, the second Thermally Activated Chemical (TAC).

The electrochemical phase involves a charged anode made of materials similar to the ones used by other electrolyzers. The TAC phase uses platinized nickel-coated stainless-steel mesh cathodes which when exposed to an alkaline water solution allow for the fast generation of hydrogen gas.

In the illustration that accompanies this posting (see above), the schematic shows a multi-cell E-TAC process with cold electrolyte (25 Celsius) circulating through cell A, generating hydrogen gas that subsequently is separated into its own storage tank seen in blue on the left. Cell B containing a hot electrolyte (95 Celsius) is used to produce oxygen which is also separated and stored (see the red tank on the left). Fluid in the grey tank circulates throughout the process helping to push the two gases to their respective storage tanks (the blue and red) without allowing mixing. The system when scaled for commercial production will be hermetically sealed so that high-purity hydrogen and oxygen streams can be produced safely.

What are the advantages of H2PRO’s invention?

1. The process is done in nearly thermoneutral conditions which makes it eminently portable for use in many areas from transportation refueling stations, to fuel cell systems, to chemical synthesis for energy storage.
2. E-TAC eliminates the need for a membrane the most expensive part of electrolyzers.
3. Conversion efficiency is 98.7% from water to hydrogen and oxygen, much more efficient than the best-reported water oxidation technologies at 75%.
4. The separation and storage of the gases with two different streams and processes removes potential hazards.
5. High-pressure production without the use of compressors further reduces costs.
6. Easy to scale and requiring less maintenance than existing water electrolysis processes makes E-TAC affordable and flexible.