washington – clean hydrogen fuel’s versatility and flexibility makes it foundational to a clean energy transition, experts told lawmakers, including clean hydrogen enthusiast joe manchin, at a senate committee on energy & natural resources hearing thursday. 

“it can provide reliable power and long-duration energy storage to enable resiliency and a renewable grid,” said sunita satyapal, the director of the u.s. department of energy’s hydrogen and fuel cell technologies office. “analysis shows the potential for two to four times more hydrogen demand in the 2040 timeframe.”

hydrogen, the universe’s most abundant element, can be separated from compounds such as water using power sources like renewable energy. this process’ net energy cycle can be low carbon or high carbon depending on how hydrogen is extracted. according to satyapal, resulting fuel can be stored in gas or liquid form and be adept at meeting larger industries’ high energy demands. 

“it can reduce emissions, especially for hard-to-decarbonize sectors like heavy duty transportation,” she told senators. 

despite hydrogen’s opportunities, obstacles remain. while fuel can be derived by extracting hydrogen atoms from water using an electric current in a process called electrolysis, the electricity’s high costs make the alternative — using natural gas — an often preferable low-cost option. 

this, coupled with hydrogen’s high flammability, contributed to senators’ concerns about the fuel. 

“there are many logistical questions that need to be answered as to the use of this technology and how it grows,” said sen. james lankford (r-okla.). 

manchin, who chairs the committee, has opposed reforms curbing the activities of the coal and natural gas industries, which remain foundational to west virginia’s economy. his own family business profits off selling waste coal to high-emission power plants. 

nevertheless, west virginia’s coal production has continued to decline due to decreasing demand and the covid-19 pandemic’s economic consequences, according to data from the u.s. energy information administration. 

unlike renewable energies such as solar and wind, hydrogen fuel still relies on natural gas. this is good news for manchin — and his west virginia constituents in the natural gas sector. 

thursday’s hearing comes after manchin backed away from the biden administration’s build back better plan, leading to several new rounds of hand-wringing and political overtures to placate the democrat. 

but manchin’s support for hydrogen is not singular, as other democrats, as well as republicans alike on the panel expressed support for the clean fuel. 

“it appears that we have bipartisan agreement that hydrogen hubs are something that can point us toward a lower-carbon future,” said sen. bill cassidy (r-la.). 

manchin asked mike graff, who is both the chairman and chief executive officer of industrial gas production company american air liquide holdings, inc., how the u.s. can accelerate hydrogen production.

“there’s got to be a clear role in a public-private partnership with the government to have smart climate policy that incentivizes the need to build the infrastructure to make this occur,” graff said. 

to accelerate progress, brian hlavinka, the director of new energy ventures for williams companies, emphasized pursuing all production methods through a “colorblind approach.”

hydrogen fuel is categorized into “color” categories that describe its carbon emissions. “green hydrogen” — the most climate-friendly option according to experts — is produced by renewable energy, whereas “blue” and “gray” hydrogen use fossil fuels and emit carbon dioxide. 

nevertheless, sen. martin heinrich (d-new mexico) later pointed out that, by around 2030, green hydrogen made from electrolysis will be cheaper overall for companies than the hydrogen made from natural gas that requires subsequent carbon capture. 

clean air task force’s jonathan lewis pushed back. “we need a lot of clean hydrogen quickly,” he said. “our expectation is that hydrogen made from natural gas with carbon capture sequestration is significantly cheaper than green electrolytic processes right now.”

the sodium hydroxide/carbonate solution that results from step 1 is pumped into an electrolysis cell through which an electric current is passed. the electricity results in the release of the carbon dioxide which is collected and stored for subsequent reaction.

optionally, a dehumidifier condenses the water out of the air that is being passed into the sodium hydroxide spray tower. the condensed water is passed into an electrolyser where an electric current splits the water into hydrogen and oxygen. water might be obtained from any source so long as it is or can be made pure enough to be placed in the electrolyser.

the carbon dioxide and hydrogen are reacted together to make a hydrocarbon mixture, the reaction conditions being varied depending on the type of fuel that is required.

there are a number of reaction paths already in existence and well known in industrial chemistry that may be used to make the fuels.

thus a reverse-water-gas shift reaction may be used to convert a carbon dioxide/water mixture to a carbon monoxide/hydrogen mixture called syn gas. the syn gas mixture can then be further reacted to form the desired fuels using the fisher-tropsch (ft) reaction.

alternatively, the syn gas may be reacted to form methanol and the methanol used to make fuels via the mobil methanol-to gasoline reaction (mtg).

for the future, it is highly likely that reactions can be developed whereby carbon dioxide and hydrogen can be directly reacted to fuels.

the afd product will require the addition of the same additives used in current fuels to ease starting, burn cleanly and avoid corrosion problems, to turn the raw fuel into a full marketable product. however as a product it can be blended directly with gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel.

•  panasonic aiming for battery-powered homes by 2011
•  battery breakthrough technology could power homes for pennies per kilowatt hour

we talk about battery-powered cars. why not battery-powered homes? these super batteries could even be fuel cells. it’s time to take innovation from the car to the home. it’s time. but, utility companies and government seem to conspire on discouraging homes to be off the grid.

but, as the u.s. power grid is already challenged, why not encourage houses to have the option to go off the grid during certain times of overload, when the house can subsist off the batter or fuel cell instead?

and as appliances get smarter, use less power, this surely seems possible today or in the next few years. the fuel cell or super battery that powers the home could get charged from the grid initially and/or through a combination of solar, wind, water, geothermal, natural gas and/or more.

the time is now, as millions every year go through more and more power outages due to severe weather. and, power outages can be quite harsh and even deadly in extreme heat or cold. as we become a wireless communication society with fewer and fewer landlines, why not evolve homes to have wireless electricity?

there are only 3 high tolerance parts and the rest of the turbine can be fabricated from locally-sourced materials even in underdeveloped countries.

a further development of this device directly produces browns gas from deep salt water sites. this version will also bring cool water from 300ft depth to the surface 24/7/365. this will substantially cool the surface water in the local environment which will lessen the strength of hurricanes wich are powered by the high temperature of suface sea water.

i have built and run wind versions of this turbine and it is effective and simple. i believe it has immense potential.

i am a naval architect, master marine technician, and marine surveyor and i am fully at home in the working environment in which i have designed this turbine.

efficient hydrogen storage remains a bottleneck for the upcoming hydrogen economy. however, mofs may offer a solution because of the distinctive qualities they possess such as large, overall pore volume and surface area, adjustable pore sizes and a tunable framework.

these remarkable materials can potentially fill the niche between other physisorbents, such as activated carbon, that have similar uptake capacities at low temperatures but little attraction to hydrogen at ambient temperature, and chemical sorbents such as hydrides, that have high hydrogen uptakes but undesirable release energy and heat issues.

team members continue to explore the potential of novel, efficient, inexpensive and environmentally friendly sorbents to store energy-related gases such as hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide. mofs are crystalline frameworks consisting of metal ions and organic ligands–ions or molecules that bind to the metal ions. in some cases, pores inside an open mof are stable after removal of guest molecules (often solvents) and the mof can be used for gas storage.

the compounds studied by the zhou group were characterized through diffraction studies using the high-energy beamline at chemmatcars, a high-brilliance synchrotron x-ray facility supported by nsf.

in the original proposed project, the students were going to build a hydrogen fuel cell version of the car to test as well. however, delivery problems for the fuel cell and a very tight project timeline made it impossible to build both cars before the students would need to enter their project in the epa’s p3 competition (http://www.epa.gov/p3/). because of the similarities between the battery electric system and fuel cell system and the data gathered during road testing, it was simple to design the vehicle and to include the hydrogen fuel cell version of the vehicle in the sustainability analysis. perhaps a future team will build the fuel cell version to validate the design and performance analysis.

the tested vehicle uses very little energy and could easily be charged from either a home-installed solar panel or by purchasing “green power” from the local utility.

api envisions numerous areas of opportunity leveraging our expertise. we propose a new paradigm for research that holds promise to fundamentally energize collaboration and economic development for api and the other locales where we anticipate operations. it is based on a foundation of plasma r&d and is centered on hydrogen, clean coal, lithium, and rare earth element production.

this technology can use solar/wind energy to power the hydrogen production for combustion engines, fuel cells and electric power plants. it is the first technology that is 100% efficient and creates no pollution whatsoever.

plasma-based hydrogen generation is a proprietary plasma-based system to be developed which will generate hydrogen from sea water using less energy than electrolysis with no catalyst, exotic metals and not create any harmful waste materials.

the process and science involved is still too new to have received a patent, though a patent application is in train, hence the details provided by the api are general in nature, so as not to jeopardize api’s intellectual property.

general information about the process is as follows:

• the process has been named “ecp-amf”
• the technology is scalable from micro to macro size, so could be sized to suit a pilot project.
• it will not require a large energy input to trigger the process.
• the source seawater/brine/fresh water will not need to be supplied to the process at an elevated temperature nor in a vapor state unlike present technologies.
• the process will operate at temperatures around 6k°c but will be designed to handle much higher temperatures.
• with appropriate hydrogen storage and trained operators the system could be operated safely in a built-up area.
• initial calculations indicate that ≈10kwhr of energy input to the system would be required to manufacture 1kg of hydrogen. [note that the theoretical minimum demand for electrolysis is ≈38kwhrs/kg h2 but the actual demand from commercial electrolysers is ≈54kwh to 80kwh, depending on their size and efficiency] • if the system were manufacturing ≈5kg hydrogen per hour, the instantaneous power demand might be ≈40kw.
• unique plasma physics path never not taken by any company or university in the world.
• the technology will also produce hydrogen and oxygen cheaply, quickly, and in high volumes from sea water, fresh water or brine.
• the energy content of hydrogen is nearly three times that of gasoline.
• energy content of 1 kg hydrogen 141.9 mj (hhv) = 39.4 kwh 20kwh electrical input to produce 100 kwh hydrogen output an hour 2.67 kg hydrogen produced an hour 23, 402 kg’s a year = 922 mwh’s a year.
• this portable technology can use solar / wind energy to power the hydrogen production for combustion engines, fuel cells and electric power plants.
• it is the first technology that is 100% efficient and creates no pollution or toxic waste whatsoever. hundreds to thousands of gallons of fresh drinkable clean water every hour.
• we already have interest from new zealand, taiwan, japan, puerto rico, europe and others.
• 2 universities have signed on to do collaboration research with api inc.
http://colossalstorage.net/api