Hydrogen may be touted as a gasoline of the longer term that stands able to decarbonize transport and business, however for the 90 million metric tons used at the moment in all the things from fertilizer manufacturing and chemical manufacturing, 96% is derived immediately from pure fuel, oil, or coal. For occasion, some of the frequent methods is thru steam reformation of methane, which mainly cooks methane so the hydrogen falls off, releasing carbon dioxide within the course of.
Hardly the stuff of a climate-friendly future.
That means there’s loads of room for corporations making an attempt to make the manufacturing of hydrogen cheaper. “There’s over $100 billion spent at the moment on hydrogen in industrial purposes,” mentioned Molly Yang, co-founder and CEO of Hgen.
Yang and her co-founder Colin Ho based Hgen three years in the past after stints at Tesla and SpaceX, respectively. Their purpose was to modularize electrolyzers, the chemistry kits able to cranking out inexperienced hydrogen by splitting water atoms into hydrogen and oxygen. Electrolysis isn’t completely clear — it nonetheless requires electrical energy, which at the moment is generated from a mix of renewables and fossil fuels, however because the grid will get cleaner, the manufacturing of hydrogen by electrolysis will get cleaner as nicely.
That imaginative and prescient earned them a $2 million seed spherical in 2022 led by Founders Fund and induction into that 12 months’s Breakthrough Energy Fellows cohort. Now, Hgen is again with one other $5 million funding spherical from Seven Seven Six with participation from Fontinalis Partners and Founders Fund, the corporate solely advised TechCrunch.
Part of Hgen’s preliminary pitch was that now we have all of the electrolyzer expertise we’d like at the moment, however it’s not sufficiently optimized. “We aren’t a supplies R&D firm,” Yang advised TechCrunch. Instead, the crew centered on optimizing your entire widget, from the electrolyzer’s electrodes to the tangle of pipes and pumps that assist them.
Hgen is utilizing alkaline electrolyzers, an previous and confirmed expertise that sometimes trades among the effectivity positive aspects of newer approaches in favor of decrease prices. But Yang claimed that Hgen has discovered a technique to shrink the electrolyzer twenty-fold, lowering supplies and manufacturing prices. “Even with first builds, we’re popping out at a a lot decrease value,” she mentioned.
In an electrolyzer, the magic occurs on the interface between the electrode and the liquid. The electrodes carry electrical energy into the liquid and facilitate the chemical response that splits the bonds between hydrogen and oxygen. When that occurs, bubbles of hydrogen fuel on one aspect of the electrolyzer and oxygen fuel on the opposite type on the electrodes and finally trickle as much as the floor.
But these bubbles additionally are inclined to overstay their welcome. “That blocks the electrodes from being reactive and having the ability to type new hydrogen,” Yang mentioned. So Hgen tweaked the electrode design to encourage hydrogen and oxygen bubbles to go away sooner. That signifies that Hgen’s electrolyzer stack will be smaller and produce the identical quantity of hydrogen. A smaller stack makes use of fewer supplies and takes up much less house, additional slicing prices. “Our cell design mainly permits for this virtuous cycle,” she mentioned.
Yang mentioned that Hgen goes to bundle your entire factor right into a 40-foot transport container that may be delivered to a web site and attached with minimal labor — “simply water and electrical inputs,” she mentioned.
The startup is initially concentrating on corporations that at the moment get hydrogen delivered in a liquified type, which Yang mentioned can value nicely over $10 per kilogram. “Being capable of keep away from all of that liquefaction, all of that truck supply, is only a extra interesting value proposition for them,” she mentioned. “And additionally a extra secure, safe provide for them.”
