Korea’s First Passenger Car Engine Capable of Running Entirely on Hydrogen September 7, 2023
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) Amid the fierce competition throughout the globe to develop hydrogen mobility technologies to achieve carbon neutrality, a new technology for a 2-liter class hydrogen-fueled engine (a passenger car hydrogen engine) capable of running entirely on hydrogen has been developed for the first time in the country (of Korea).
The joint research team led by Principal Researcher Young Choi of the Department of Mobility Power Research of the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (President Sang-jin Park, hereinafter referred to as KIMM), an institute under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Science and ICT, and Researcher Hong-gil Baek of the Zero-Carbon Engine Research Lab of Hyundai-Kia Motor Company (Chairman Eui-sun Chung, hereinafter referred to as HMC) developed the “direct injection hydrogen engine” that runs entirely on hydrogen fuels, and demonstrated its world-class excellence through performance evaluation.
A research team led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has achieved a groundbreaking advancement in nanomaterials by successfully developing a highly efficient electrocatalyst which can enhance the generation of hydrogen significantly through electrochemical water splitting.
This breakthrough has great application potential for the clean energy industry.
Professor Zhang Hua, Herman Hu Chair Professor of Nanomaterials at CityU, and his team have developed an electrocatalyst by using the transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) nanosheets with unconventional crystal phases as supports. The electrocatalyst exhibits superior activity and excellent stability in electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction in acidic media.
Does Colorado Need Hydrogen for a Carbon-free Future? by Amanda Pampuro
September 15, 2023
Introduction:
HUDSON, Colo. (Courthouse News) — Bordered by river rockscapes and decorative wagon wheels, any house in the Box Elder Creek Ranch neighborhood could fill the pages of Home and Garden magazine.
Located in the town of Hudson thirty miles northeast of Denver, the community sits amid a rural landscape of cornfields, horse corrals and scripture-quoting billboards. Inside the development, playscapes tower over white farm fences. Residents fly flags pledging support for the nation, the U.S. Navy and their dogs.
It’s an unlikely scene for an energy revolution — and yet that’s just what’s playing out at Box Elder Creek Ranch.
In an April announcement, Xcel Energy, a national gas and electric company, chose this place as the first Colorado community to receive hydrogen blended into its natural gas lines. If successful, it will provide a blueprint for serving the fuel cocktail to more of Xcel’s 1.5 million gas customers statewide.
Over the next five years, the utility company hopes to demonstrate the safety of using hydrogen blends to cheaply lower carbon emissions without the need for completely new infrastructure. The developments come as officials eye hydrogen as a potentially cleaner power source for an increasingly warming planet — and as environmentalists raise the alarm about what they call a false solution to the climate crisis.
Researchers at Lund University in Sweden are investigating a car fuel comprised of a liquid that is converted to hydrogen by a solid catalyst. The used liquid is then emptied from the tank and charged with hydrogen, after which it can be used again in a circular system that is free from greenhouse gas emissions.
Lund researchers have demonstrated that the method works, and while it is still basic research, it has the potential to become an efficient energy-storage system in the future.
"Our catalyst is one of the most efficient around, at least if you look at publicly available research," says Ola Wendt, professor at the Department of Chemistry at Lund University, and one of the authors.
The findings are published in the journal Catalysis Science & Technology.
Finding alternative ways of producing, storing and transforming energy in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels is necessary to reduce the impact on the climate. One way involves much-talked-about hydrogen gas, which many see as a future solution for energy storage. Nature stores energy in chemical bonds, and hydrogen contains the highest energy density in relation to its weight.
Biden Administration Puts $7 Billion Toward Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs by Nolan Stout
October 13, 2023
Introduction:
(Courthouse News) — The Biden administration on Friday announced seven regional clean hydrogen hubs will receive a total of $7 billion to create more than 105,000 permanent jobs.
President Joe Biden announced the recipients of the funding under the bipartisan infrastructure law at an event in Philadelphia.
“Today’s announcement is transformational,” he said. “For the first time in a long time we’re actually investing in America. … We’re investing in our future.”
The money will augment $40 billion in private investment in clean hydrogen, the White House said. The hubs are not single facilities, but are a variety of linked assets working together to develop domestic hydrogen.
Collectively, the facilities are expected to produce more than 3 million metric tons of clean hydrogen per year. Officials said the energy source will reduce emissions in “hard-to-decarbonize sectors” like chemical, steel and cement manufacturing. Biden said wind and solar power don’t generate enough power to support industrial work.
In the continued effort to move humanity away from fossil fuels and towards more environmentally friendly energy sources, researchers in Japan have developed a new material capable storing hydrogen energy in a more efficient and cheaper manner.
The new hydrogen energy carrier can even store said energy for up to three months at room temperature. Moreover, since the material is nickel based, its cost is relatively cheap. The results were reported in Chemistry—A European Journal.
As humanity combats the ongoing climate crisis, one avenue researchers focus on is the transition into alternative sources of energy such as hydrogen. For several decades now Kyushu University has been investigating ways to more efficiently use and store hydrogen energy in the effort to realize a carbon neutral society.
Preventing Hydrogen Vehicle Aging During Sudden Stops November 15, 2023
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) When purchasing a smartphone, one of your primary considerations is typically finding a durable case and a screen protector to safeguard the device from external harm. Similarly, a group of researchers from POSTECH has recently garnered attention in the academic world by introducing a tungsten coating that functions as a shield, much like these protective cases and films, for eco-friendly hydrogen fuel cell electrodes.
Professor Yong-Tae Kim from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Graduate Institute of Ferrous & Eco Materials Technology and along with Sang-Hoon You, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), have applied a layer of tungsten oxide (WO3) to the membrane-electrode assembly(MEA), a crucial component of hydrogen fuel cells. This innovation aims to enhance the performance and efficiency of the electrode. Their research has received recognition and was featured on the front cover of the international journal Science Advances.
In the context of hydrogen vehicles, when they are initiated or brought to a sudden halt (start-up/shut-down, SU/SD), external air is drawn into the vehicle. The oxygen present in this air triggers an unintended electrochemical reaction within the fuel cell, expediting the deterioration of the catalyst. Given the nature of driving conditions, frequent SU/SD occurrences are inevitable, resulting in significant catalyst degradation.
The team harnessed the concept of metal-insulator transition (MIT) to tackle this challenge. MIT is a phenomenon wherein an insulator becomes capable of conducting electricity when subjected to external factors like changes in the concentration or temperature of an ambient gas. WO3 possesses the unique property of selectively conducting electricity as protons are intercalated/deintercalated by exploiting the MIT phenomenon. To address the issue, the team applied a coating of WO3 to the catalyst layer at the anode of the MEA. Under normal operational circumstances, this coating maintains electrical conductivity. However, it selectively obstructs current flow exclusively during start-up/shut-down (SU/SD) conditions, preventing electrochemical reactions that lead to catalyst corrosion.
University of Houston Researchers Suggest Hydrogen Fuel Can be a Competitive Alternative to Gasoline and Diesel Today November 15, 2023
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) As the world strives to cut greenhouse gas emissions and find sustainable transportation solutions, University of Houston energy researchers suggest that hydrogen fuel can potentially be a cost-competitive and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional liquid fuels, and that supplying hydrogen for transportation in the greater Houston area can be profitable today.
A white paper titled "Competitive Pricing of Hydrogen as an Economic Alternative to Gasoline and Diesel for the Houston Transportation Sector" examines the promise for the potential of hydrogen-powered fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector. More than 230 million metric tons of carbon dioxide gas are released each year by the transportation sector in Texas.
Traditional liquid transportation fuels like gasoline and diesel are preferred because of their higher energy density. Unlike vehicles using gasoline, which releases harmful carbon dioxide, and diesel – which contributes to harmful ground-level ozone, fuel cell electric vehicles refuel with hydrogen in five minutes and produce zero emissions.
According to the Texas Department of Transportation, Houston had approximately 5.5 million registered vehicles in the fiscal year 2022. Imagine if all these vehicles were using hydrogen for fuel.
Houston, home to many hydrogen plants for industrial use, offers several advantages, according to the researchers.
Durable, Inexpensive Electrocatalyst Generates Clean Hydrogen and Oxygen From Water November 27 2023
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) Hydrogen is a highly combustible gas that can help the world achieve its clean energy goals if manufactured in an environmentally responsible way. The primary hurdle to creating hydrogen gas from water is the large amount of energy required for the electrolysis of water, or splitting water molecules into hydrogen gas (H2) and oxygen (O2). A new electrocatalyst made of nickel (Ni), iron (Fe) and silicon (Si) that decreases the amount of energy required to synthesize H2 from water has been manufactured in a simple and cost-effective way, increasing the practicality of H2 as a clean and renewable energy of the future.
Most H2 produced today is derived from fossil fuels, which contributes to global warming. Manufacturing H2 from water through the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) requires the use of a catalyst, or agent that lowers the amount of energy required for a chemical reaction. Until recently, these catalysts were made up of rare earth metals, like platinum, reducing the cost-efficiency and practicality of clean hydrogen production. A group of material scientists from Dalian University of Technology in Dalian, China manufactured an electrocatalyst, or a catalyst that uses electricity, using inexpensive materials and methods to effectively decrease the energy required to generate clean H2 from water. Importantly, the ferric-nickel silicide (FeNiSi) alloy, or mixture, also reduces the energy required to generate O2 from water, making the catalyst bifunctional.
The researchers published their study in Nano Research Energy on November 3, 2023.
“What really limits the development and practical application of water electrolysis technology is electrocatalytic materials. At present, common catalysts, such as precious metals…, are mostly single-function catalysts, which limits the practical application of water electrolysis for hydrogen production. Therefore, the research and development of efficient, stable, cheap and environmentally friendly bifunctional electrocatalytic materials is a primary goal in the field of electrocatalysis,” said Yifu Zhang, senior author of the study and researcher in the School of Chemistry at Dalian University of Technology.
Biden Attempts Climate-friendly Hydrogen Tax Plan by Jael Holtzman
December 22, 2023
Introduction:
(Axios) The Biden administration on Friday released its attempt at a climate-friendly approach to using the tax code to boost hydrogen fuel production.
Why it matters: Administration officials seek to address the irony that, without sufficient guardrails on curbing energy use in producing hydrogen, a boom in the new business could actually undermine progress on reducing carbon emissions.
• Industries that have sought looser restrictions so they can easily get in on the hydrogen market — like nuclear energy and hydropower — may miss out on the credit.
Driving the news: The Treasury Department released proposed, and highly anticipated, guidance for the hydrogen credit created through the Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden's signature climate law.
• The guidance says companies making hydrogen fuel can only claim the credit if they adhere to a requirement that they rely on relatively new low-emission energy — a mandate that the industry has fought.
• Companies must also stick to geographic and time-based restraints on how their hydrogen production sucks energy from the power grid.
• The approach is similar to European regulators' attempt at restraining hydrogen energy use.
• White House climate czar John Podesta said Thursday these were "important environmental safeguards" engineered to avoid negative climate impacts.
A group of researchers from the Technion Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering has presented a new technology for producing green hydrogen using renewable energy. Their breakthrough was recently published in Nature Materials.
The novel technology embodies significant advantages compared to other processes for producing green hydrogen, and its development into a commercial technology is likely to reduce the costs and accelerate the use of green hydrogen as a clean, sustainable alternative to fossil fuels.
Using hydrogen as a fuel instead of coal, gasoline, and "natural" gas will reduce the use of these fuels and greenhouse gas emissions from various sources, including transportation, the production of materials and chemicals, and industrial heating. Unlike these fuels, which emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when they combust in the air, hydrogen produces water and is therefore considered a clean fuel.
However, the most common way to produce hydrogen involves using natural gas (or coal) and the process emits large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—thereby canceling out its advantages as a green, sustainable alternative for fossil fuels. In 2022, global consumption of hydrogen stood at approximately 95 million tons—a quantity suitable for improving various fuel products, and especially to produce ammonia, which is needed for manufacturing agricultural fertilizers.
Groundbreaking Discovery May Enables Cost-effective and Eco-friendly Green Hydrogen Production January 22, 2024
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) A breakthrough technology has been developed that enables the production of green hydrogen in a more cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner, bringing us closer to a carbon-neutral society by replacing expensive precious metal catalysts.
Led by Professor Jungki Ryu in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST and Professor Dong-Hwa Seo from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST, a joint research team has successfully developed a bifunctional water electrolysis catalyst for the high-efficiency and stable production of high-purity green hydrogen.
The newly-developed catalyst exhibits exceptional durability even in highly corrosive acidic environments. By utilizing ruthenium, silicon, and tungsten (RuSiW), the catalyst is more cost-effective compared to conventional platinum (Pt) or iridium (Ir) catalysts. Furthermore, it emits significantly fewer greenhouse gases, making it an eco-friendly alternative.
Water electrolysis is a cutting-edge technology that produces hydrogen through the process of electrolyzing water. It is considered a key technology for achieving a carbon-neutral society as it enables the production of environmentally friendly hydrogen without carbon emissions.
The research team focused on finding alternatives to precious metal catalysts like platinum and iridium, which exhibit stability in acidic conditions. Ruthenium has gained attention as an eco-friendly metal due to its relatively low production cost and significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to platinum and iridium. However, it faced challenges in commercialization due to its lower catalytic activity compared to platinum and lower stability compared to iridium.
Yamaha's world-first hydrogen outboard unveiled on prototype boat
By C.C. Weiss
February 14, 2024
Yamaha previously announced it would show its prototype hydrogen-combustion outboard motor at the 2024 Miami International Boat Show, and it's gone the extra mile in bringing a prototype boat and fuel delivery system to go along with it. Yamaha calls its new hydrogen V8 outboard a world first for the recreational boating industry and has partnered up with Roush and Regulator Marine to install it into a working boat that will begin testing in a few months.
In developing its hydrogen outboard prototype, Yamaha adapted the technology it has used for land-based hydrogen combustion engines, including the one it installed on the Drive H2 golf cart concept revealed last month at the PGA Show. In this case, it created a hydrogen version of its flagship XTO outboard, an offshore V8 offering 425- and 450-hp ratings, the most powerful in Yamaha's outboard lineup. Yamaha has not released output specs for the hydrogen version, so we're not sure how close it comes to joining the gas XTO at the top of the Yamaha outboard family.
Ultra-high density hydrogen storage holds twice as much as liquid H2
By Paul McClure
February 20, 2024
A nanoporous material that holds hydrogen at twice the density of cryogenic liquid H2 could address the challenges of large-scale liquid and gas storage that have held this clean fuel back.
Hydrogen is finding plenty of applications as a clean fuel – in trucking and commercial vehicles, short range aviation and shipping, for example, where it carries considerably more energy per weight and volume than lithium batteries and can deliver superior range figures and quick refueling. You can burn it more or less like gasoline, or run it through a fuel cell to generate electric power.
It has the highest energy per mass of any fuel, but it's a pain to store. Keep it in gas tanks and you'll need some 700 atmospheres' worth of compression. Keep it as a liquid, and you'll need to maintain cryogenic temperatures just 20 degrees above absolute zero. And even when squashed into a supercooled liquid, it might be lightweight, but it takes up a surprising and inconvenient amount of volume, making it both energy-hungry and tough to package where space is an issue.
Now, Korean researchers say they've created a material that stores hydrogen at double the density of its cryogenic liquid form. “Our innovative material represents a paradigm shift in the realm of hydrogen storage, offering a compelling alternative to traditional approaches,” said Hyunchul Oh, from the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), lead author on this new research.
As a molecule, hydrogen can physically adsorb into a porous material in a process called physisorption. Highly porous materials have previously demonstrated the ability to store a large amount of hydrogen per unit mass, but they've struggled to store a lot of energy within a small volume.
A cluster of five hydrogen molecules (purple and red) occupying a pore in the material
Clean airliners: Megawatt-scale liquid H2 powertrain comes to life
By Loz Blain
March 03, 2024
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/megawatt- ... -aviation/
Universal Hydrogen is already flying the world's largest hydrogen airliner – and now the company has started testing swappable liquid hydrogen fuel modules that'll radically boost the range of clean passenger aircraft operations slated for 2026.
Decarbonizing aviation is challenging; you need to carry a lot of energy in the lightest possible form, and it's very hard to compete with jet fuel on that metric. Batteries are currently abysmal, so the last few years have seen a furious pace of development in the hydrogen space, generally taking hydrogen on board as a compressed gas, then running it through a fuel cell to power electric propellers.
Gaseous hydrogen might get your aircraft roughly double the range that a battery can, and that unlocks short-range regional flights with zero emissions. Universal is at the absolute bleeding edge here – last year, the company flew the largest hydrogen fuel cell-powered aircraft ever built, by a country mile. You can see Lightning McClean, a converted Dash-8 airliner, take its first flight in the video below.
Evolution-capable AI Promotes Green Hydrogen Production Using More Abundant Chemical Elements March 1, 2024
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) 1. A NIMS research team has developed an AI technique capable of expediting the identification of materials with desirable characteristics. Using this technique, the team was able to discover high-performance water electrolyzer electrode materials free of platinum-group elements—substances previously thought to be indispensable in water electrolysis. These materials may be used to reduce the cost of large-scale production of green hydrogen—a next-generation energy source.
2. Large-scale production of green hydrogen using water electrolyzers is a viable means of achieving carbon neutrality. Currently available water electrolyzers rely on expensive, scarce platinum-group elements as their main electrocatalyst components to accelerate the slow oxygen evolution reaction (OER)—an electrolytic water reaction that can produce hydrogen. To address this issue, research is underway to develop platinum-group-free, cheaper OER electrocatalysts composed of relatively abundant chemical elements compatible with large-scale green hydrogen production. However, identifying the optimum chemical compositions of such electrocatalysts from an infinitely large number of possible combinations had been found to be enormously costly, time-consuming and labor-intensive.
Researchers in Sweden unveiled a new concept for producing hydrogen energy more efficiently, splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen without the dangerous risk of mixing the two gases.
Developed at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, the new method decouples the standard electrolysis process for producing hydrogen gas, which splits water molecules by applying an electric current. In contrast with prevailing systems, it produces the resulting oxygen and hydrogen gases separately rather than simultaneously in the same cell, where they need to be separated by membrane barriers
That separation eliminates the possibility of the gases mixing with the risk of explosions, says researcher Esteban Toledo, a Ph.D. student at KTH who co-authored the paper published today in Science Advances along with Joydeep Dutta, professor of applied physics at KTH. It also eliminates the need for rare Earth metals.
The two researchers patented the system, and a company, Caplyzer AB, was formed through KTH Innovation to scale the technology.
Scientists develop bifunctional catalyst performance enhancement technology to lower the cost of hydrogen production https://techxplore.com/news/2024-03-sci ... rogen.html
by National Research Council of Science and Technology
Researchers have developed a methodology to improve the reversibility and durability of electrodes using bifunctional platinum-nickel alloy catalysts with an octahedral structure that exhibits both oxygen reduction and generation reactions. The study is published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.
Bifunctional catalysts are a new generation of catalysts that simultaneously produce hydrogen and oxygen from water using a single catalyst.
Currently, electrochemical systems such as water electrolysis technology and CCU (carbon dioxide capture and utilization) utilize separate catalysts for both electrodes, resulting in a high unit cost of hydrogen production. Bifunctional catalysts that can be synthesized in a single production process are attracting attention as a technology that can reduce production costs and increase the economic efficiency of electrochemical energy conversion technologies.
Fuel-cell train travels more than 1,700 miles on one tank of hydrogen
By Paul Ridden
March 27, 2024
A hydrogen fuel-cell passenger train developed by Swiss rail vehicle maker Stadler Rail has achieved a new Guinness World Record, traveling for almost two days around the clock for a distance of 1,741.7 miles.
Efforts to clean up dirty trains are already well underway, with heavy investment in electrifying networks around the world as well as rolling out battery-electric locomotives such as the FLXDrive, the Blues train and the Flirt Akku.
That last example is made by Stadler Rail AG, and managed to achieve a Guinness World Record in 2021 for the longest per-charge battery-only journey of 224 km (~140 miles), on a route between Berlin and Warnemünde during a freezing local winter – not bad for a train that was designed with an operational per-charge range of 80 km.
