“Green” hydrogen is the production of hydrogen fuel using renewable energy resources. Two companies said they successfully produced green hydrogen at a recent demonstration in California.
Heliogen supplied concentrated solar power (CSP) to power the operation, and Bloom Energy used its electrolyzer to produce hydrogen fuel.
Heliogen said its AI-powered CSP technology is able to generate for longer periods of time than solar PV, operating on a near 24/7 basis by storing the solar energy. Heliogen said this results in more compact design and lower costs in production. The company said the demonstration is a step towards replacing fossil fuels with green hydrogen in commercial and industrial applications.
Image: Heliogen
Image: Heliogen
Heliogen’s CSP creates heat, steam, and electricity from concentrated sunlight. It was paired with Bloom’s solid-oxide, high-temperature electrolyzer to make the fuel. The company said hydrogen can be made 45% more efficiently than low-temperature PEM and alkaline electrolyzers.
Electricity dictates nearly 80% of the cost of hydrogen from electrolysis. The CSP method reduces the need for electricity, using heat to aid its operations.
Hydrogen is expected to grow from an annual 115 million metric tons to 500-800 million metric tons by 2050, which would represent 15 to 20 percent of global energy demand. Over $300 billion has been invested in hydrogen up and down the value chain, and McKinsey & Company project about $150 billion of that investment has gone directly towards production.
The successful green hydrogen production is a step towards decarbonizing industrial processes, which account for more than one-third of the world’s energy consumption, and a quarter of global carbon emissions.
The companies said this demonstration is an important step towards making CSP-backed hydrogen production cost-competitive with solar PV.
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With that kind of heat just disassociate H2 and O2 from steam with a catalyst directly.
Just like they were going to do with high temp nukes.
Heliogen’s CSP is cool as comes in standard 5MW units for industrial and/or power heat.
I think there will be a good market for them used in many ways, most storing heat for on demand generation but chemical, synfuels, process heat, etc too..
QUESTION: Does the CSP electricity power the electrolysis? or;
Is the CSP used to create steam from water and then the steam is split by hydrolysis into H2 & O2?
yes , hydrolysis. Heliogen is the first company to exceed 1000 degree Celsius that is necessary to be 100% effective hydrolysis. Anything less than 1000 degree C will not as some of the steam will return to water after hydrolysis. Heliogen is still generating electricity similar to existing CSPs but still at hotter temperatures. Heliogen also use its properiatry CSP to perform industrial processes like making cement for concrete or melting metals.. Heliogen is still working on raising the CSP temperatures beyond 1000 degree C. The reason other CSP developers never did the same thing is that they see no need for that for basic electricity generation as lower CSP temperatures were performing satisfactorily or that they chose to develop far larger CSP plants with the outer heliostats not delivering as much photons as the inner ones.. They are happy with , say, 600 degree C so why raise the temperature. I believe that Heliogen will develop new generations of CSP at far higher temperatures possibly toward 2000 or 3000 degree C that can do more industrial processes like casting metals or things ike that that requires far higher temperatures. We generally view solar energy as source of basic electricity through photovoltaics , but sunlight can be folded inot far higher temperatures than conceived.