The California company is improving H2 production efficiency with its disruptive tech.NewHydrogen, Inc. (OTC: NEWH) announced it has entered a research agreement with University of California, Santa Barbara and is working with a team of UC Santa Barbara experts to develop a more efficient way to split water into cheap green hydrogen using a thermochemical approach.
The groundbreaking technology uses heat instead of electricity to generate hydrogen.
The thermochemical approach uses heat instead of electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. This method is different from the conventional approach of producing green hydrogen, which is via electrolysis by using electrolyzers with renewable energy, such as solar or wind, to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The trouble with the conventional approach is that green electricity is very expensive and is the main cost contributor of producing green H2.
According to NewHydrogen CEO Steve Hill, “electricity currently accounts for 73% of the cost of green hydrogen production.”
Hill explained in a NewHydrogen press release that unlike renewable electricity, renewable heat sourced from geothermal or concentrated solar can be much cheaper. “Often it’s even free in the form of waste heat from sources such as nuclear power plants, and industrial processes for making steel, glass, ceramics, and many things we use in our everyday lives,” Hill stated.
The UC Santa Barbara tech team plans to use molten liquids to produce green hydrogen.
The UC Santa Barbara technology team working with NewHydrogen on the cheap green hydrogen project is a team of world-class chemical and materials engineers, led by Dr. Philip Christopher.
Hill revealed that the research team intends to exploit the features of molten liquids to directly and continuously split water in a single redox chemical loop, to generate hydrogen and oxygen in separate chambers.
“We are developing a novel Molten Catalytic Liquid that can be reduced in one chamber,
oxidized in another chamber, and is continuously recycled and reused. The only inputs are heat and water,” Hill said.
Once fully developed, Hill says the NewHydrogen ThermoLoop™ will be a unique and first-of-its kind, high efficiency thermochemical water-splitter. It will use low-cost common materials and common industrial temperatures below 1,000 degrees Celsius, potentially producing the cheapest green hydrogen in the world.
“NewHydrogen has the potential to disrupt the entire hydrogen industry by dramatically lowering the cost of green hydrogen by using cheap heat and any source of cheap water,” Hill said.
