Fuel Cell Nation

Hydrogen in Massachusetts

Everybody knows about the major hydrogen/fuel cell goings on in California. And many people know of the millions of dollars that the state of Connecticut is putting into fuel cells. However, Massachusetts has some hydrogen/fuel cell organizations as well!

The Northeast Electrochemical Energy Storage Cluster is a network of commercial, academic and government members striving to accelerate the development and implementation of hydrogen production and fuel cell technologies.

The Massachusetts Hydrogen Coalition, Inc. is a non-profit that is expanding hydrogen, fuel cell and related industries in Massachusetts by increasing resource availability, expanding visibility, and creating marketing and partnering opportunities.

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center is the first state agency in the nation dedicated solely to facilitating the development of the clean energy industry. Besides hydrogen and fuel cells, they support solar, wind, and other green energy technologies.

Now we just need surcharges on energy utility company bills (like California's and Connecticut's) that get used to promote renewable hydrogen and fuel cells!

US DOE Electrolyzer Webinar

Its not much advanced warning, but today the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced it is putting on a webinar on Monday, May 23, 2011, from 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. (EDT) titled "Hydrogen Production by PEM Electrolysis—Spotlight on Giner and Proton." The webinar will include a discussion of the importance of electrolysis for renewable hydrogen production with zero carbon footprint (provided you use solar, wind, etc. to generate the electric power.) (The webinar was originally supposed to be at 1:00 p.m., but the DOE personnel had another meeting crop up.)

 Monjid Hamdan of Giner Electrochemical Systems (GES) will be one of the two industry-based presenters at the webinar. I've seen his slides; it should be a good presentation for all, as it involves an emphasis on the technology, and its not just a sales job for GES' commercial products.

One final note: DOE calls it Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) electrolysis, while old-school electrochemists prefer to call it Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolysis. Same difference — its all good!

DOE 2011 Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Meeting (Part 1)

I'm just back from the 2011 US DOE Hydrogen and Vehicle Technologies Program Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Meeting in Crystal City, across the river from Washington DC. It was well attended; I heard there were 1,700 people at the two hotels where it was held.

My favorite presentation was by Avālence LLC CTO Paul Dunn, presenting his project "High-Capacity, High Pressure Electrolysis System with Renewable Power Sources." He mentioned how they had a problem in the lab last year with 6,500 psig alkaline electrolysis of hydrogen and oxygen: they produced oxygen gas with only a 96% purity (or 4% H₂ in O₂.) There's a big problem with operating this way: the lower flammability limit of hydrogen in air, or oxygen, is 4%! It's a wonder that they didn't blow themselves up!

The best part is where he described their plan to reduce the hydrogen content of the oxygen by recirculating their electrolyte on both the anode and cathode sides of the electrolyzer. Guess what - he told us they used a thermosiphon to recirculate electrolyte without a pump, and it reduced their oxygen to 0.3% hydrogen! Guess what my Giner Electrochemical Systems poster presentation discussed last year? A proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer using a thermosiphon to recirculate the catholyte! Just a coincidence? Who knows! I'm just glad I helped minimize his chances of blowing up!!

Crystal City, Here I Come!

Time for the 2011 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Program and Vehicle Technologies Program Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Meeting (AMR). May 9-13, 2011 I am traveling to the Crystal City Marriott and Crystal Gateway Marriott, in Arlington, Virginia to make a poster presentation. The Poster is for the first year of a Phase II Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant I wrote titled "Unitized Design for Home Refueling Appliance for Hydrogen Generation to 5,000 psi."

The Poster presentation for the last year's Phase I work at Giner Electrochemical Systems, LLC is located here: Unitized Design for Home Refueling Appliance for Hydrogen Generation to 5,000 psi.

Here is some background on the project:

"U.S. automakers have invested significant resources in the research and development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. However, to enable their widespread use, an additional major investment will be required to construct an infrastructure for hydrogen production and delivery to fueling stations. In order to facilitate this transition, the DOE has recommended that high-pressure hydrogen generation for home refueling of fuel cell vehicles be implemented as an intermediary approach.

GES has developed PEM-based electrolyzer technology for producing hydrogen at moderate to high pressure directly in the electrolyzer stack ... A low-cost process for producing high-pressure hydrogen from water by electrolysis will significantly advance the development of the hydrogen economy, providing hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles at a price competitive with that of gasoline on a per-mile basis. The ability to produce hydrogen economically, the relatively low capital cost of the electrolyzer unit, and the low maintenance cost of the unit will allow widespread distribution of hydrogen home fueling appliances deemed necessary for the introduction of fuel cell vehicles."

I just submitted a U.S. Patent application on this idea, so I can't really say anything in addition to what's in the public documents. But, enjoy!

Giner and Wikipedia

I came across this photo (left) on Wikipedia's High Pressure Electrolysis page the other day. FYI, it is the only photograph of an electrolyzer on the Wikimedia Commons Electrolysis page. It is a picture of a Giner Electrochemical Systems, LLC (GES) electrolyzer that is capable of producing 0.35 kg of hydrogen per hour at 1250 psi, with simultaneous production of ambient pressure oxygen. Wikipedia Commons obtained the photograph from a presentation titled Low Cost, High Pressure Hydrogen Generator made at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) 2008 Hydrogen Program Annual Merit Review Meeting.

In that presentation, GES presented results on one of its DOE electrolyzer R&D programs. Page 16 includes a photograph (right) of a GES electrolyzer system being benchmarked at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). As it turns out, I was the one who traveled to NREL to help them start up the electrolyzer. Also installed at the NREL lab were:

• Solar panels and wind turbines, which were connected to
• An electrical management system, including DC/DC converters, AC/DC converters and batteries,
• With two other commercial electrolyzers, in addition to the GES electrolyzer
• Hydrogen storage, including a hydrogen compressor
• A 60 kW hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine/generator set.

GES is shipping another electrolyzer system to NREL for testing in the next year.

European Hydrogen Storage

Prof. Duncan H Gregory is on a roll. Not only is he a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow (Scotland), and landed a job as Scientific Consultant with the startup Hydrogen Horizons, but he has recently teamed with European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS).

EADS Innovation Works recently issued the press release Nanotechnology could pave the way for hydrogen fuels where they announce their receipt of funding from the Materials Knowledge Transfer Network - part of the UK Technology Strategy Board - and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). This funding will allow the team of EADS IW, Hydrogen Horizons, and University of Glasgow to pay a student to carry out a four year PhD project on replacing the "current" PCT patent-pending Hydrisafe metal hydride material with a more advanced material. The release also describes the current Hydrisafe storage material as being the commercially available lanthanum nickel hydride (LaNi₅H₆) - certainly not very experimental at all! So did Hydrogen Hoirzons recently apply to patent a commercially-available material?

A read of the Hydrogen Horizons PCT application A hydrogen containing tank shows a fairly weak patent application. Dr. Fredy Ornath, CEO of Hydrogen Horizons, is the only listed inventor, and he provides no data/description/claims on what really counts - the composition and performance of the hydrogen storage material! In other words, it is basically a heat transfer patent.

Wanting to find if they really have something in the pipeline, some Googling uncovered this presentation from 3 years ago:

Applied Hydrogen Inc. - Solid Hydrogen Packaging for Vehicles, Utilities and Merchant Delivery
From The Israel Export & International Cooperation Institute. 

Now it looks like some double-dipping is going on - many of the slides in this Applied Hydrogen Inc. presentation match those in the previous link to a Hydrogen Horizons presentation. Plus, many of the founders and technical people are the same in Hydrogen Horizons and Applied Hydrogen Inc. I hope that Prof. Gregory and EADS know what they are getting into...