Researchers from Swinburne University’s Centre for Translational Atomaterials and Shaanxi Normal University have developed a novel catalyst that can produce high-performance solar-triggered hydrogen from seawater. If there is one thing that we all know about seawater, it’s that there is a lot of it, so it's no surprise that this scientific discovery has great potential.
In order to utilize this new catalyst, the researchers had to develop a prototype device, the Ocean-H2-Rig. It can float on the ocean's surface to produce green hydrogen from seawater.
One of the easiest and greenest ways to produce hydrogen is through photocatalytic water splitting, which uses solar energy to split water into its composite atoms, securing the hydrogen and harmlessly emitting the oxygen. The novelty of the single-atom platinum catalyst the researchers have developed is that the photo-generated electrons and holes triggered by solar radiation do not try to recombine, which greatly improves hydrogen production efficiency.
Tianyi Ma, the lead author of a related research paper that was recently published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, said that the team used the single-atom platinum catalyst as the electron extractor.
“It is synthesized by a scalable and low-cost calcination method, easily produced at large scale,” said Ma. “The high solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency is what we need for industrial application.”
According to Baohua Jia, the founding director of the Centre for Translational Atomaterials, the reusable catalyst “promotes highly efficient hydrogen production with an outstanding quantum yield of 22.2% under LED-550 illumination, which stands among the best catalysts ever reported.”
The idea of “Solar Rigs” floating on the world’s oceans to convert seawater to hydrogen fuel is not a new one. In 2018, scientists from Columbia University in the United States developed a device called “a floating photovoltaic electrolyzer.” Columbia University researcher Daniel Esposito even worked out how much of the ocean’s surface would need to be covered by giant “solar fuel rigs” in order to generate enough hydrogen fuel to replace the 2018 levels of global oil use. He toldSmithsonian Magazine that63,000 square miles, or an area equivalent to the state of Florida, would be required.
Of course, this technology still needs to overcome enormous obstacles. Nevertheless, Australian researchers are now on the cutting-edge of this promising line of green hydrogen technology.
The newRenewable Hydrogen Market Report, produced by ANT Energy Solutions and backed by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), features a number of key findings in the race to develop an Australian renewable hydrogen economy. The main conclusion is that on-site solar is the only way to go.
The report’s authors ran two models for renewable hydrogen produced by electrolysis, The first is a high OPEX, low CAPEX model (grid-connected, high capacity-factor), while the second is a high CAPEX, low OPEX model (behind-the-meter, low capacity-factor). The analysis indicated “that despite the much lower utilization rate, behind-the-meter solar renewable hydrogen generation can produce hydrogen at approximately half the cost per kilogram to a grid-connected system” with an electricity cost of AU$0.11 (US$0.07) per kilowatt-hour.
What this means is that the most cost-effective way of producing renewable hydrogen is by powering an electrolyzer with on-site solar. Indeed, the report suggests that hydrogen can be produced via on-site solar at a cost of $3.19 per kilogram of hydrogen versus $6.08 if produced from the grid.
Of course, considering that the costs of solar continue to decrease as efficiency rises, the cost of behind-the-meter solar hydrogen will only continue to drop, possibly below the AU$2 mark.
“Based on this alone, Australia has great potential to drive forward an increase in renewable energy and renewable hydrogen production,” the authors of the report said. “The impetus from ARENA is continuing to drive the cost of solar down with a continued reduction in the cost of large scale solar expected over the next five to 10 years.”
The call then, is for states and the federal government to support large-scale solar electrolysis as the cleanest and most obvious way to drive down the capital costs of a hydrogen economy.
Economic ecosystem
On-site solar is the most cost-effective way to build a domestic and export hydrogen industry, but it also might be the only way. “Commercialization of hydrogen as an end product requires the development of an entire economic ecosystem,” according to the report. “As with all ecosystems, they cannot function until there is critical mass in the system, so the faster scale can be developed, the more chance there is for the ecosystem to form and advantage to be generated.”
If Australia doesn’t act on its competitive advantage sooner rather than later, other countries might develop their hydrogen economies and start exporting first. The report points to Australia’s solar panel industry as an example of “where Australia failed to develop this ecosystem and competitive advantage has been lost to China and the United States, where scale of development has occurred in technology research, equipment design and fabrication.”
Businesses have already noticed the obvious competitive advantage. Toyota is installing asolar-electrolyzerat its site in Melbourne. Indeed, the company recently celebrated Earth Day by unveiling the first completed stage of its green hydrogen hub, with the help of ARENA funding.
ARENA CEO Darren Miller stands outside Toyota’s Altona Centre of Excellence.Image: ARENA
Export potential
The CSIRO National Hydrogen Roadmap expects demand for hydrogen imports by Asian nations to reach 3.8 million tons by 2030. At the same time, ACIL Allen Opportunities for Hydrogen Exports model suggests that 10% to 20% of Japanese and South Korean hydrogen demand could be met by Australian exports. In other words, hydrogen means big business.
However, before we can talk about how much hydrogen countries such as Japan and Korea might want from us – let alone how we’ll manage to get the hydrogen up there – we must first decide how we’re going to produce said hydrogen.
In November, the COAG Energy Council adopted theNational Hydrogen Strategy, our pathway to a domestic and export hydrogen economy. The strategy, however, remains “technology-neutral,” which is to say it is not solely to produce green hydrogen, but to keep Australia’s options open to fossil-fuels as well — playing the field, as it were. Although, as the ANT report shows, fossil-fuel-produced hydrogen is rather senseless compared to renewably produced hydrogen. Energy Minister Angus Taylor may think he is playing the field, but these are Flanders Fields, not Elysian ones, which is to say that Taylor is pursuing a senseless policy for the comforting sake of outdated norms.
Future forecasts
The ACIL Allen Opportunities for Hydrogen Exports model projected a mid-case forecast of 500,000 tons of hydrogen per annum by 2030. To put that in perspective, if we continue only with what we have already and what we have under construction, by 2025 we will have less than 3,000 tons per annum by 2025.
This is to say, if we don’t scale up renewable hydrogen production capacity by 160 times by 2025, we’ll be just 497,000 tons short of the ACIL Allen mid-case.
If we don’t make a change, nothing will change.Image: ANT Energy Solutions
For an increase of that scale, Australia needs to put multiple industry-scale (100 MW-plus) renewable hydrogen projects in place over the next few years or the cost of production will remain too high and the hydrogen opportunity will be tentative, if not lost.
The renewable hydrogen opportunity cannot afford to be lost, as the scope of its Promethean potential is unfathomable, but there is much that can be understood already. If renewable hydrogen breaks the $2 per kilogram barrier, for example, it could immediately replace the domestic market for natural gas feedstock and provide a low-cast pathway to a green ammonia export industry, let alone Australia’s grander export ambitions. But, of course, “industry-scale renewable hydrogen development will require government and industry support to enable the adoption and the continued reduction in the cost per kilogram of renewable hydrogen … At levels below A$1.95 between 2025 and 2030, Australia will be able to transition a domestic market and be competitive in the forecast export markets.”
Currently, it is estimated that only 2% to 4% of the world’s hydrogen is produced via electrolysis.
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In May 2019, a federal government grant of $990,150 backed Daintree Renewable Energy Pty Ltd toward a feasibility study that would take the fully renewable solar baseload-power microgrid to ‘shovel ready’ status within 12 months. If what Federal MP Warren Entsch has said is true, construction on the project should be underway in a matter of months.
“Work commenced in early December 2019,” said Entsch, “and will be finalised in July 2020…The final report will include a complete series of engineering and technical design packages including a detailed energy load profile study, microgrid management design, solar generation and storage analysis and design, electrical and civil work designs and microgrid economic analysis.”
Because the Daintree is a World Heritage Protected Rainforest there are heavy restrictions on planning and development. Because of this, Entsch has also quashed the rumour that further development in the region was on the cards. The microgrid project is it, and, Entsch assures us, it “is being designed to align with the strict planning regime and accommodate energy requirements for existing population and businesses.”
The proposed microgrid would reduce the Daintree area’s reliance on diesel dramatically. Currently, the region relies on four million litres of diesel fuel per year to generate power.
Volt Advisory Group project manager Richard Schoenemann said work on the project was “actually” slightly ahead of schedule. “It will remove the need to burn dirty and inefficient diesel in the Daintree,” said Schoenemann, “allowing customers to have access to a cleaner, more affordable, more reliable source of energy.”
“But more importantly,” Schonemann stressed, “once the concept is demonstrated and up-and-running it will have enormous potential to improve the power supply and lives of people living in remote communities including throughout the Torres Strait.”
Like many remote island communities, Torres Strait Islanders would greatly benefit from the sustainable renewable energy supplied by solar based microgrids.
The federal government grant forms part of its $50.4 million Regional and Remote Communities Reliability Fund, part of the Morrison Government’s $2 billion Climate Solutions Fund. You may remember the Climate Solutions Fund as the pitiful federal effort toward the nation’s Paris targets that was supposed to be a 10-year investment plan but has already been pushed to 15 years, cutting the investment by 30%.
Under the scheme, the Coalition government plans to support exploratory work for up to 50 off-grid and fringe-of-grid feasibility studies, and take proposals like the Daintree region project to the investment stage.
