Hydrogen refuelling on the Moon no longer seems so out of this world, as a partnership between Connecticut-based clean energy products company Skyre and Eta Space continues to develop the first hydrogen fuelling plant.
Together the companies are working to develop the “world first” with key goals of sustainability and efficiency. The companies have said the fuelling plant will produce green hydrogen, mirroring the infrastructure needed on Earth for emerging hydrogen economies.
“Sustainability is partially enabled by the ability to generate hydrogen fuel right on the moon’s surface with almost non-existent resources, as opposed to having it delivered from Earth,” said Trent Molter, SKYRE CEO.
“One resource available for use is ice in the permanently-shadowed craters of the Polar regions. Based on a proprietary electrochemical platform, SKYRE will electrolyse the ice water into its hydrogen and oxygen components and our H2RENEW™ will then compress and liquefy the hydrogen for use as fuel.”
Critical to the process is having a robust refrigeration system to liquefy the hydrogen, which in turn, requires a compressor to pressurise it for use as a fuel.
“Typically, it’s very hard to compress a small molecule like hydrogen, making traditional mechanical compressors very inefficient and unreliable for the task and ultimately, not able to produce green hydrogen,” said William Notardonato, Eta Space Chief Technology Officer.
“The H2RENEW is a solid-state system that requires little or no dependency on logistics to operate efficiently and has no moving parts which results in greater reliability and increased cost-efficiencies. It hits on all marks, making it the ideal fit for the demands of lunar liquefaction.”
