Pennsylvania has crossed into the “grey” zone
As the hydrogen industry grows, renewable energy players in the United States rely on green hydrogen produced from renewable resources to satisfy demand. Meanwhile, fossil fuel players are attempting to carve out space for the production of hydrogen from natural gas to continue. It may come down to Pennsylvania, where authorities are developing plans for a huge new hydrogen center, whether they succeed.
The difference between green and clean hydrogen
Hydrogen is used in a wide range of commodities and sectors in today’s global economy. An increasing interest in hydrogen for fuel cell cars, industrial operations, and power generation has resulted in a long-term spike in demand for hydrogen in recent years.
Because natural gas, along with coal to a lesser extent, is the primary source of world hydrogen supply, this should be excellent news for fossil energy stakeholders.
However, new long-term options have developed. The majority of the work is focused on green hydrogen, which is hydrogen gas pushed from water using a renewable energy-powered electrical current.
Green hydrogen was not economically viable until the cost of wind and solar electricity dropped. The cost of electrolysis systems is decreasing as the green hydrogen business matures.
Green hydrogen has become a popular approach to reducing carbon emissions, but fossil energy companies are striving to keep a piece of the hydrogen market by tying carbon capture devices to traditional hydrogen production and calling it “clean” hydrogen.
The hydrogen test in Pennsylvania
When factories and other firms throughout the supply chain are struggling to break free from their ties to fossil fuels, it’s difficult to understand how “clean” hydrogen from natural gas can entice them. Green hydrogen appears to have an unassailable edge, but natural gas supporters still have a significant advantage, which Pennsylvania politicians are ready to put to the test.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) launched an $8 billion competitive grant program in February under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (also known as the Infrastructure and Jobs Act, or IIJA) aimed at establishing at least four “clean hydrogen hubs” in the US. Pennsylvania has applied for a piece of the pie, leveraging its significant natural gas resources.
In a May 16 press release, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf stated, “My administration has been working closely with energy, labor, and industry stakeholders across all sectors to develop the public-private partnerships needed to address the challenges of industrial sector decarbonization and develop the necessary conditions for the commonwealth to be a leader in deploying clean hydrogen and carbon capture technologies.”
The news release also says that “Pennsylvania is well-known for its richness of natural resources and is an East Coast leader for natural gas production,” indicating that the “clean” hydrogen mentioned by Governor Wolf is natural gas.
Natural gas has been fixed
Given the strength of the green hydrogen movement, it’s easy to dismiss the Pennsylvania hydrogen center idea. However, the $8 billion set aside for future hydrogen hubs must include at least two in gas-rich areas of the United States.
Natural gas stakeholders in Pennsylvania have an additional benefit, in addition to the legislative carveout in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Green hydrogen supporters are at a disadvantage due to the state’s lackluster renewable energy profile.
Pennsylvania is now ranked 27th out of 50 states in terms of installed wind, solar, and energy storage capacity, according to the trade association American Clean Power (ACP). Meanwhile, green hydrogen hubs have been proposed in Texas (number one on ACP’s list), California (second on ACP’s list), and North Dakota (number 13 on ACP’s list).
Green hydrogen hubs have more prospects
A high ranking, on the other hand, does not appear to be a need for green hydrogen activity. Utah has emerged as an early user of integrated green hydrogen infrastructure (number 26 on ACP’s list). There have also been proposals in Missouri (24) and Mississippi (21). (44).
A newly announced multi-state green hydrogen consortium, which includes New York State (20), New Jersey (35), Connecticut (43), and Massachusetts (43), is perhaps the most ambitious of all (29). Despite the fact that none of the four states are now ranked highly, they will begin to use their tremendous offshore wind resources in the next years.
All of this action with green hydrogen raises an interesting topic. Will a gas-powered hydrogen hub in Pennsylvania thrive commercially if it receives funding?
After all, just a few years ago, the illusory promise of a new petrochemical hub for Pennsylvania and the Appalachian area boosted gas players. The proposal, first proposed by the DOE in 2019, is planned for five additional petrochemical plants in the area. The first was created by Shell, but the others never followed.
Yale Environment 360 forecasted a bleak future for the vision’s realization last month
“Obstacles such as global plastic overproduction, local hostility to pipelines that feed such plants, and public worry over a tidal wave of garbage choking coastlines and landscapes mean that even the region’s second proposed ethane cracker may never materialize,” Beth Gardiner wrote. “It appears that further plants are much less likely. The industry’s once-high ambitions for Appalachia have been cast into doubt, as have its intentions to rapidly increase global plastic output.”
Given the possibility of competition from green hydrogen hubs elsewhere in the United States, the phrase regarding the overproduction of plastic should raise red signals for politicians interested in developing a gas-powered hydrogen hub in Pennsylvania.
A surprising conclusion to the hydrogen story
The comparatively high cost of green hydrogen has given natural gas stakeholders a significant edge thus far. However, that selling advantage is likely to fade faster than energy analysts had predicted.
Bloomberg NEF global head of strategy Kobad Bhavnagri expects a “tenfold reduction in the cost of hydrogen electrolyzers coupled with ever-cheaper renewable energy” to result in a cost advantage for green hydrogen compared to hydrogen from natural gas by 2030, according to the renewable energy industry news site ReCharge News.
Whether or whether Pennsylvania becomes a hydrogen center, the improved prognosis for low-cost green hydrogen might spur further effort.
A plan by two major corporations, Plug Power and Brookfield Renewable Partners, to use an existing hydropower facility on the Susquehanna River to produce green hydrogen is one evidence of interest in the state.
Another intriguing element is that Pennsylvania’s nuclear energy business may be used at some point in the future. Pennsylvania has the second-highest nuclear capacity in the United States, with five nuclear power reactors.
The Department of Energy has been looking at systems that use thermochemical processes instead of electrolysis, and they’ve already identified waste heat from nuclear power plants as a promising option for thermochemical green hydrogen production, which may put Pennsylvania in the driver’s seat.
Pennsylvania may receive DOE financing for its gas-powered hydrogen hub, but it might be a hollow victory.
Clean hydrogen fuel might become a more realistic alternative to gasoline as a result of a new energy-efficient method of producing hydrogen gas from ethanol and water.
Researchers at Washington State University created pure compressed hydrogen using an ethanol-water mixture and a modest amount of power in a unique conversion mechanism. Because of the breakthrough, hydrogen may be produced on-site at filling stations, requiring just the transportation of the ethanol solution. It’s a significant step toward reducing the need for high-pressure hydrogen gas transportation, which has been a key roadblock to its usage as a clean energy fuel.
Su Ha, professor at the Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering and corresponding author of the research published in the journal Applied Catalysis A, said, “This is a new way of thinking about how to make hydrogen gas.” “I believe it has a very strong possibility of having a significant influence on the hydrogen economy in the near future if there are sufficient resources.”
Hydrogen as an automobile fuel is a potential but unreached sustainable energy option. A hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle, like an electric vehicle, emits no damaging carbon dioxide. It can be fueled with hydrogen gas in minutes at hydrogen filling stations, unlike an electric automobile.
Despite the promise of hydrogen technology, storing and transporting high-pressure hydrogen gas in fuel tanks poses substantial financial and safety risks. Due to the difficulties, there is limited hydrogen gas infrastructure in the United States, and the technology has a low market penetration.
The WSU researchers devised a conversion device that had an anode and a cathode. They were able to electrochemically manufacture pure compressed hydrogen by putting a modest quantity of power into an ethanol and water combination using a catalyst. The reaction’s carbon dioxide is collected as a liquid.
The conversion process would allow existing infrastructure for carrying ethanol to be utilized instead of dangerous hydrogen gas, and compressed hydrogen gas could be readily and safely manufactured on-demand at gas stations.
“Every gas station already uses ethanol-containing fuel,” Ha remarked. “You can see an ethanol-water mixture being readily supplied to a nearby gas station using our existing infrastructure, and then producing hydrogen that is ready to pump into a hydrogen fuel cell automobile using our technology.” We have no reason to be concerned about hydrogen storage or transit.”
The electrochemical device devised by the team consumes less than half the electricity of pure water splitting, another way of producing de-carbonized hydrogen that researchers have looked into. Instead of working hard later in the process to compress the hydrogen gas, the researchers saved energy by compressing the liquid ethanol combination first, resulting in an already compressed hydrogen gas.
“The addition of ethanol in water modifies the chemistry,” said co-lead author and graduate student Wei-Jyun Wang. “We can really execute our reaction at a considerably lower electrical voltage than is required for pure water electrolysis,” says the researcher.
Other water-splitting technologies require a costly membrane, whereas their technology does not. The electrochemical process produces hydrogen, which is then available for consumption.
“A process that can effectively capture carbon dioxide while producing compressed hydrogen and offers a low-electrical energy cost alternative to water electrolysis could have a significant impact on the hydrogen economy,” said Jamie Kee, a Voiland School postdoctoral researcher and one of the paper’s lead authors. “It’s incredibly interesting because there are so many factors that go into enhancing hydrogen generation systems.”
North Carolina State University researchers have devised a novel method for extracting hydrogen gas from liquid transporters that is quicker, cheaper, and more energy-efficient than earlier methods.
“While hydrogen is widely regarded as a sustainable energy source for transportation, there are some technical challenges that must be overcome before it can be considered a viable alternative to existing technologies,” says Milad Abolhasani, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State and the corresponding author of a paper on the new technique. “The expense of storage and transportation is one of the major barriers to the implementation of a hydrogen economy.”
CO2 emissions are not produced by hydrogen fuel. Furthermore, hydrogen refueling stations might be built at existing petrol stations, utilizing existing infrastructure. However, because carrying hydrogen gas is hazardous, hydrogen must be delivered in liquid form. The energy and cost of extracting hydrogen from the liquid carrier at destination sites like filling stations is a major roadblock to this technique.
“Previous research has demonstrated that photocatalysts may be used to liberate hydrogen gas from a liquid carrier using just sunlight,” adds Abolhasani. “However, prior ways for doing so were time-consuming, labor-intensive, and needed a substantial quantity of rhodium — a highly costly metal.”
Malek Ibrahim, the paper’s first author and a former postdoctoral researcher at NC State, says, “We’ve developed a technique that uses a reusable photocatalyst and sunlight to extract hydrogen gas from its liquid carrier more quickly and with less rhodium, making the entire process significantly less expensive.” “Moreover, the sole wastes are hydrogen gas and the liquid carrier, which may be reused several times.” It’s quite long-term.”
The fact that the new approach is a continuous-flow reactor is one of the keys to its success. The reactor has the appearance of a narrow, translucent tube filled with sand. The “sand” is made up of micron-sized titanium oxide grains, many of which are rhodium-coated. One end of the tube is pumped with hydrogen-carrying liquid. The rhodium-coated particles line the tube’s an outside edge, where they may be exposed to sunlight. These particles are photoreactive catalysts that react with the liquid carrier to liberate hydrogen molecules as a gas when exposed to sunshine.
The researchers designed the technique such that just the exterior grains of titanium oxide is coated with rhodium, guaranteeing that no more rhodium is used than is required.
“In a traditional batch reactor, titanium oxide makes up 99 percent of the photocatalyst, and rhodium makes up 1%,” adds Abolhasani. “We just require 0.025 percent rhodium in our continuous flow reactor, which saves a lot of money in the long run.” A gram of rhodium may cost upwards of $500.”
In three hours, the researchers were able to achieve a 99 percent yield in their prototype reactor, indicating that 99 percent of the hydrogen molecules were liberated from the liquid carrier.
“This is eight times faster than traditional batch reactors, which take 24 hours to attain 99 percent yield,” explains Ibrahim. “And the technique should be simple to scale up or scale out for commercial catalyst reuse — simply make the tube longer or combine numerous tubes working in parallel.”
The flow system’s efficiency degrades after 72 hours of continuous operation. The catalyst may now be “regenerated” without having to remove it from the reactor — it’s a simple six-hour cleaning procedure. The system can then be restarted and operated for another 72 hours at full efficiency.
The technology has been granted a provisional patent by NC State.
“Continuous Room-Temperature Hydrogen Release from Liquid Organic Carriers in a Photocatalytic Packed-Bed Flow Reactor,” is an open-access work published in ChemSusChem. Jeffrey Bennett, a postdoctoral researcher at NC State, was a co-author of the work.
