NewHydrogen, a publicly traded research company in Santa Clarita, is currently working to develop an electrolyzer technology to lower the cost of green hydrogen production. Partnered with UCLA, the improved technology would have applications for a green energy grid and clean transportation – including freight, air mobility and electric vehicles.
“With this energy transition that really everyone around the globe is experiencing, moving toward renewable energy and things, there’s still a problem,” Spencer Hall, chief operating officer of NewHydrogen, said. “The problem right now is it’s not in the money. And so that’s where we come in. We’re trying to find a way to lower the cost.”
Hall sees a future powered by hydrogen. While sources of hydrogen are abundant and clean – it’s a component of water – the process for extracting the element is expensive and relies on rare earth minerals such as platinum and iridium.
Electrolyzers are machines that use electricity to break water into oxygen and hydrogen. NewHydrogen’ research would create new electrolyzers that replace iridium with stable non-precious metal-based oxygen reaction catalysts that are more economical.
“What we’re doing is just trying to lower that cost, because as soon as there’s an economic case for it, then all the different adoptions can start taking place,” Hall said.
According to François Le Scornet, president of Carbonexit Consulting, a global green energy consulting firm, the cost to produce so-called green hydrogen with a low carbon footprint is three to four times more expensive than “grey hydrogen” produced from methane gas.
“However, green hydrogen prices are projected to significantly decrease,” Le Scornet said. “For electrolyzers, the most significant source of potential cost reduction is linked to economies of scale with regards to manufacturing costs. Cost improvement in catalysts or membrane costs in PEM Electrolyzers for instance are also important but to a much lower extent than economies of scale.”
“NewHydrogen aims to support the (U.S. Department of Energy) goal to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen by 80 percent to $1 per kilogram in a decade,” the company said in a statement.
If NewHydrogen’s technology can drive down the cost of electrolyzers, the company hopes it will lead the wide scale adoption in power generation and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
Major car manufacturers such as Toyota, Hyundai, BMW, Mercedes-Benz all have fuel cell electric vehicles in development.
“We would partner with either manufacturers or with other folks who are already working on different applications,” Hall said.
The company, formerly named BioSolar, was started in 2006 and trades over the counter. It does not have a product on the market.
NewHydrogen plans to make a prototype electrolyzer in late 2022.