New Energies, new possibilities

NewHydrogen Reports Progress in Developing Cost-Effective Green Hydrogen Technology.

NewHydrogen, Inc. (OTCMKTS:NEWH), provided an update on its breakthrough ThermoLoop™ technology, which uses water and heat rather than electricity to produce the world’s cheapest green hydrogen. The company shared progress on its collaboration with the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) in developing ThermoLoopTM.

The prevailing method for producing green hydrogen is to split water into oxygen and hydrogen with an electrolyzer using green electricity produced from solar or wind, which is expensive and contributes approximately 73% of the total production cost.

Steve Hill, CEO of NewHydrogen, said:

In collaboration with UC Santa Barbara’s world class research team, we are developing ThermoLoopTM, a novel low-cost thermochemical process that uses inexpensive heat, instead of costly electricity to split water.

“Existing thermochemical approaches require extremely high temperatures (around 2,000°C), or an inefficient multi-step process. Our goal with ThermoLoopTM is to achieve an efficient, chemical looping redox process that operates under 1000°C.”

Since the project’s inception in August 2023, the UCSB team has made significant strides, including:

• Designing and building a reactor test stand that has successfully generated hydrogen and oxygen from water using a thermochemical reaction cycle, allowing for performance testing of synthesized materials under varying conditions.
• Conducting thermodynamic screenings to identify and select promising new candidate materials and reaction conditions, with research to understand hydrogen and oxygen generation mechanisms and the effects on material structures.
• Validating the foundational science behind ThermoLoop™ by synthesizing and testing materials cited in key publications, testing to demonstrate repeated cycles of hydrogen and oxygen production, and disproving certain claims from prior research publications.
• Identifying key co-reactants that provide driving forces to enable water splitting under 1000°C and with small temperature differentials between hydrogen and oxygen production steps.

Looking ahead, the team plans to:

• Explore novel material systems for thermochemical cycles to enhance hydrogen production efficiency while minimizing the temperature difference between hydrogen and oxygen generation.
• Upgrade the experimental test stand to allow higher throughput screening of materials and broaden the search for optimal candidates.
• Develop a conceptual process model for a technoeconomic analysis (TEA) of the water splitting process, incorporating material cost data and reaction kinetics to estimate hydrogen production costs at scale.
• Select the material compositions that optimize performance, reduce energy input, and lower operating temperatures, thereby significantly reducing green hydrogen production costs.

Hydrogen specialist H-TEC SYSTEMS becomes Quest One and starts series production of electrolyzer – New Gigahub in Hamburg.

Hydrogen specialist H-TEC SYSTEMS is becoming Quest One. With its rebranding on September 30, the company is underlining the importance of its own ambitious goal: By 2050, it aims to avoid one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions through the use of its own electrolyzers and make a decisive contribution to climate protection.

The official rebranding coincides with the opening of a new production site in Hamburg, Germany, in September. With the completion of the new “Gigahub,” the company is starting automated series production of electrolysis stacks – the technological heart of an electrolyzer.

Quest One: avoiding one percent of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050

Robin von Plettenberg, CEO of H-TEC SYSTEMS:

With Quest One, we have found a name that gets to the heart of our work. We want to avoid one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions – which is why we are focusing on hydrogen, the first element in the periodic table.

“This mammoth task is a true quest and hugely motivating for us. We want to develop Quest One into one of the world’s largest manufacturers of electrolyzers and help shape the ramp-up of the hydrogen economy. With our new name, we are underlining this international ambition and putting climate protection at the center.”

For green hydrogen to become a reliable alternative to fossil fuels, it must be available in large quantities and at competitive prices in the future. The climate-neutral conversion of industry – due to its high energy requirements – will be an important area of application for hydrogen, which is produced with the help of electrolyzers where so-called stacks are installed. Here, energy becomes an element – and water becomes oxygen and hydrogen with the help of renewable electricity. PEM electrolysis, which is based on proton exchange membrane (PEM) technology, is one of the most important processes for industrially scaled hydrogen production using renewable energies. With the start of industrial series production of electrolyzers, it should be possible to meet the large future demand for green hydrogen. As a pioneer in the industry, H-TEC SYSTEMS already has over 25 years of experience in this field, with several dozen systems in operation in Europe.

Uwe Lauber, CEO of MAN Energy Solutions SE, says:

The rebranding of H-TEC SYSTEMS into Quest One marks the beginning of a new era.

“When we acquired H-TEC SYSTEMS in 2019, the company had a start-up character: around 40 employees produced top-quality electrolyzers in a manufacturing operation. Since then, the number of employees has increased more than tenfold and we are building the most modern stack production facility in Europe. Today, H-TEC SYSTEMS is a leading driver of the hydrogen transition, for which international business is also becoming increasingly important. This impressive development is reflected in the new name, Quest One.”

New Gigahub will play a key role in accomplishing the one percent mission

One milestone is the opening of the new, state-of-the-art production and development site in Hamburg on September 30. The new Gigahub will facilitate the automated series production of stacks with a potential total electrolysis capacity of over five gigawatts annually at full capacity. These stacks will be developed and produced at the new site in the Hanseatic city. Previously, many of these manufacturing steps have been performed manually. With the automation of production at the Gigahub, up to 75 percent of the current production time can be saved. Around 200 employees will work at the Gigahub location in the areas of production, development, testing and service. The finished stacks and electrolyzers will then be assembled at the company’s Augsburg site in southern Germany by a team of more than 350 employees using the automotive assembly principle. Since the beginning of 2024, H-TEC SYSTEMS has been active in the US market, where it is building up local supply chains.

Technological excellence, industrial scalability, solid financing

Launched in 1997 as a research project, H-TEC SYSTEMS is today considered a specialist in the field of PEM electrolysis. MAN Energy Solutions has been the majority shareholder of H-TEC SYSTEMS since 2021 and has pledged financing of up to 500 million euros for the coming years. As a subsidiary of MAN Energy Solutions and part of the Volkswagen Group, H-TEC SYSTEMS will also be able to draw upon the enormous expertise of both groups as Quest One in the future: Both through MAN Energy Solutions’ global sales network and experience in major heavy industry projects, as well as via direct access to the Volkswagen Group’s expertise in the area of production scaling and in the supplier-based series business.

Source: Hydrogencentral

EINDHOVEN, The Netherlands, Sept 2 (Reuters) - The European Commission is working on tighter rules to ensure EU funding for hydrogen projects benefits European companies, after local industries raised concerns over cheap Chinese imports, the EU's head of climate change policy said on Monday.

The EU will this month launch its next round of funding for green hydrogen projects, as Brussels attempts to kick-start a local industry to produce the fuel.
Meanwhile, the EU is hardening its stance on other green technologies from China, imposing tariffs on electric vehicles which it says benefit from excessive subsidies.

European manufacturers of electrolysers, machines that use electricity to split water to produce hydrogen, have warned they cannot compete with cheaper Chinese producers.

They want the EU to protect them by adding criteria that would favour local firms to its Hydrogen Bank funding scheme, something climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said the bloc's executive was now working on.

"The next auction will be different. We will have explicit criteria to build European electrolyser supply chains," Hoekstra said in a speech at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.

"If European cybersecurity and safety cannot be guaranteed, if the data of our people and our companies cannot be guaranteed, companies cannot get support," Hoekstra said, adding that while Europe has a good electrolyser manufacturing presence, China is oversupplying the market at lower prices.

Hoekstra said the planned hydrogen subsidy criteria, while not yet final, could include requirements for work to be done inside Europe, or setting a limit on projects' dependence on non-EU countries.

The cybersecurity rules would be geared at ensuring European data "do not end up in the hands of governments outside of the (European) Union," he added in a joint interview with Reuters and Politico.

The EU awarded 720 million euros to seven EU hydrogen projects in April. At the time, industry sources told Reuters the low-priced bids from some successful projects indicated that they would be using cheaper Chinese equipment.

The Commission has not disclosed if this is the case.

A Commission document, seen by Reuters, showed around a quarter of the projects that bid for the funding planned to source their electrolysers from outside the EU. Nearly another quarter planned to use a mix of EU and non-EU made equipment.

Hoekstra said the EU was not aiming to cut ties with China, but would take action where it deemed competition to be unfair.

Source: Reuters

Hygreen Energy, a global electrolyzer manufacturer and hydrogen technology developer, is set to significantly increase its presence in Europe by establishing an electrolyzer manufacturing facility, launching a technology development program, and building green hydrogen production plants in Spain.

Specifically, the expansion plans announced today include the construction of a new electrolyzer manufacturing plant in Malaga, Spain, where Hygreen Energy will initially focus on producing its 5MW electrolyzers, which comply with European standards, with a production capacity of up to 5 GW, scaled according to demand in Europe. Additionally, the company plans to create a research and development program dedicated to advancing electrolyzer technologies, plus an alkaline 10MW testing platform. Finally, Hygreen Energy plans to build large-scale green hydrogen production plants with strategic partners, totaling up to 1.12 GW in capacity, in the Andalusian province of Huelva.

The company estimates that these projects will attract and infuse over €2 billion in capital and resources, benefiting both the region and the broader hydrogen economy. These initiatives extend beyond Hygreen Energy’s recent announcements in the region, which include separate agreements with Coxabengoa, Voltan, and Kemtecnia, all aimed at creating a comprehensive ecosystem for Hygreen Energy’s electrolyzer customers, project developers, and EPC providers.

Benny Wang, CEO at Hygreen Energy, said: “By establishing an electrolyzer factory, launching an R&D program, and developing green hydrogen plants, Hygreen Energy will be well positioned to capitalize on the burgeoning hydrogen market in Europe, offering electrolyzer solutions that are precisely primed for Europe and tailored to our customers’ project performance and delivery needs.”

Source: Hydrogentechworld