Truly incredible things are happening on the timeline. I've been watching this project from afar, so I’m glad to see Casey and his team are achieving their targets.
Why this is important: Casey places the technoeconomics first.
The conventional electrolyzer stack is expensive. As Casey explains "electrolyzers need to use expensive platinum group metal electrodes, special separation membranes, heat exchangers, pumps, post-processing, and extremely high pressures and temperatures, which further restrict material choices and manufacturing processes." (Source: terraformindustries.wordpres…)
But instead of optimizing the electrolyzer, if you sacrifice some efficiency for lower overall installed cost, then you can be economically superior. Importantly, the Terraformer stack has become possible because of the installed cost of solar has dropped so significantly.
But that changes the entire calculus. Rather than optimizing hydrogen per kilowatt-hour, you maximize output for each dollar of installed equipment. As Casey notes, "it goes against our intuition about the virtue of high efficiency and high capital utilization."
The fact that Terraformer is producing >99.9% hydrogen gas in the desert is proof that Casey’s logic works and the economics might scale.
What does this mean in practice?
First, it could commoditize the stack. Simplified assemblies and mass production could put hydrogen in the world of appliances. Cheap hydrogen inside a co-located chemical factory could help scale the idea.
Over the long term, you could easily imagine a desert site that is too far from transmission to connect to the gird could still be economically viable if the output leaves as methanol, methane, or ammonia.
The real breakthrough here, however, is the reimagining of chemical-production system by optimizing the correct variables. That’s incredibly powerful.
Link
How to Produce Green Hydrogen for $1/kg
At Terraform Industries we believe in a future where energy is universally cheap, clean, and abundant. We’re developing a scalable electrolyzer to deliver the cheapest possible green hydrogen…
terraformindustries.wordpress.com
Casey Handmer (@CJHandmer)
Last week the hydrogen electrolyzer team @terraformindies pulled off yet another first, the sustained production of >99.9% pure H2 from our vertically integrated, California-manufactured electrolyzer stack while it was coupled directly to a solar array at our Muroc desert test site.
WTAF?
Most commercial electrolyzers need carefully conditioned power from expensive battery-meditated backup systems. Ours runs directly off the sun. Clouds pass, the day turns to night, and we maintain purity from a stack whose Bill of Materials cost is well below $100/kW.
Terraform's single-minded focus on capex reduction has allowed us to convert sunlight to hydrogen in an unprecedented demo at a cost below $2/kg. If that wasn't enough, we have a crystal clear plan of steady execution to push that cost below $1/kg in the coming years.
Rather than linger on this point in response to experts-with-spreadsheets who said this was not only beyond my team, it was forbidden by known laws of physics, let me tell you a bit about how we actually pulled this off.
We started building this test site in March. Once the panels and electrics were in place the CO2 team were the first to demonstrate production on site. Close behind them the electrolyzer team planned the logistics necessary to project substantial operational ability into a hostile test site in the middle of nowhere. It's no good to find you're missing a wrench half way through the day!
Much of the test prep was completed before dawn, when the panels go live. The sun came up and the stack immediately started splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. The team carefully monitored purity and flammability as the sun climbed through the sky. As designed, the stack warmed up and conducted even more power, maintaining solid production until late afternoon when the setting sun shaded the panels.
Terraform's synthetic fuel system is uniquely designed to follow the sun and extract the maximum possible value from cheap solar panels.
Hydrogen is a pernicious molecule. It leaks through and embrittles metals, burns almost invisibly at a wide range of mixtures in air, burns hot and fast and can easily undergo detonation transition, and has about half a dozen other spookily dangerous properties. My advice is to never work with it unless you absolutely have to. The Terraformer produces and consumes H2 in one compact discrete area with a minimum of complexity and fuss, and as expected this demo was completed in accordance with our rigorous safety standards and no unscheduled excitement!
This successful demonstration was also a profound milestone for the team after a testing anomaly last December compelled us to finally rip off the bandaid and move decisively towards the "future design" with half the parts but considerable complexity in assembly. No-one else makes electrolyzers this way and we, more than anyone, know exactly why. And also how to do it anyway, translating directly into a unique cost advantage.
A huge congratulation to Ken, Sherman, @ckalitin, Nikhil, Abdullah, and Aaron for their successful test campaign.
Terraform's hydrogen and CO2 are the chemical precursors for synthetic methane and methanol, which we make in our own synthetic fuel reactor.
Combined, we make oil and gas out of sunlight and air. We are breaking the geological and geographical monopolies on oil production.
In the limit, Terraform will deploy these electrolyzers by the millions and they will all be plug-and-play with solar PV arrays.
The Muroc smoke test campaign is far from over.
We will win!
— https://nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/2084709069013778483#m