Muhaimin Iqbal
Author

Green Hydrogen Carrier, Deliver More Than It Can Carry

Advanced Renewable

Tue , 05 Mar 2024 18:20 WIB

The reactor designed by the Advanced Renewable Organization (ARO) team, which we call XH2 (Extra High Hydrogen), turns out to have another function that is no less interesting. If the first function is to produce hydrogen and at the same time separate the waste in the form of CO2 (https://lnkd.in/ga8DJsWE), we can also use this XH2 as a very effective hydrogen delivery system.

We know that conventional hydrogen logistics are very expensive because to store or transport it requires a pressure of 700 Bar or a temperature of minus 253 degrees Celsius, and even then it can only store around 42 kg of hydrogen for each m3 container.

By utilizing XH2, hydrogen can be stored in the form of methanol or ethanol, which at standard atmospheric temperature and pressure is already a liquid. Or if you want it in gas form, you can use DME (Dimethyl Ether) which for logistical needs only requires a pressure of around 5 Bar.

Not only is liquid handling cheap and easy, or low pressure is definitely cheaper and easier than very high pressure, hydrogen delivery using ethanol or DME has other advantages. That is, the hydrogen delivered will double when ethanol or DME is reformed! Where does this 100% additional hydrogen come from? hydrogen from water which is used to reform ethanol or DME.

If the carrier used is methanol, only 1.5 times the hydrogen carried by the methanol itself is delivered, or a 50% more hydrogen. See the reforming reactions for each of these carriers in the image below.

So this XH2 reactor will truly be an enabler of the hydrogen economy, because both production and delivery of green hydrogen can be much lower cost than it is now. The era of carbon-free energy could also be before our eyes, because from the reaction below we can see that CO2 production from XH2 will be concentrated in this machine - so it is easy to capture and reuse to generate further hydrogen. There is no more excessive CO2 in our air!