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Fuel Cells

The fuel cell is the key piece of kit in the HydroGenesis system that creates electricity when there is insufficient solar energy hitting the photovoltaic panels. There are several types of fuel cells, depending on the fuel used and the different components and chemical processes in the fuel cell. Fuel Cells were first invented in the mid-19 th century with British and German physicists making parallel advancements. The first practical hydrogen fuel cell (an alkaline fuel cell) was developed by an Englishman in 1932, which was used in the Apollo moon project and still used by NASA to this day. Hydrogen fuel cells are used in many extreme places including in the International Space Station as well as German submarines. HydroGenesis, as our name suggests, will use fuel cells fueled by locally generated hydrogen via onsite electrolysers ; but how do hydrogen fuel cells generate electricity? A hydrogen fuel cell takes hydrogen in at the anode and oxygen at the cathode. The hydrogen atom
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Climate Highlights From The G7 Summit, 2021

  The G7 summit is a political organization/meeting of the seven largest ‘advanced’ economies in the world and comprises the UK, United States, Canada, Japan, France, Italy and Germany. The Group of Seven (G7) meet on a semi-regular basis to discuss global issues, form agreements and publish statements about global events with the annual summit, involving the leaders of the G7, as the headline event.  The G7 summit in 2021 took place in Cornwall, UK, between 11th and 13th June. As well as the G7 leaders, representatives from the EU, India, South Korea and Australia also attended. The agenda for the 2021 G7 event included recovery from COVID, climate change and global trade. As leaders of the largest economies in the world (aside from China), these discussions and any commitments made can have a profound impact on people across the world. This year’s summit was also viewed as being particularly important in the build up to COP26, the UN climate change conference happening in Glasgow in
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Carbon Dioxide & Greenhouse Gases

  E verywhere you look these days there are references to Net Zero, Low Carbon, Carbon Tax, but why are we so obsessed and why now? Carbon refers to Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in this respect, and it is important as CO2 accounts for approximately 80% of all greenhouse gases (GHGs) that are released into the atmosphere by human activity. The other 20% of greenhouses gases emitted that have negative long-term effects on the planet are Methane (CH4), Nitrous Oxide (N2O) and Fluorinated Gases (refrigerants, and by products of aluminium and semi-conductor manufacturing). Why are we bothered about greenhouses gases? Simple, they cause warming of the planet, which affects the delicately balanced system that supports the human population. The GHGs are named due to the macroscale effect that can be analogised to that of an agricultural greenhouse, trapping heat. The Earth gets warm due to radiation from the sun warming the atmosphere, some is absorbed by the earth, and the rest gets reflected out int
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Storing Hydrogen

A key aspect to a  HydroGenesis  system is the storage of the hydrogen we produce by electrolysis. This is not as simple as many would initially believe (including us) mainly due to the lightness of hydrogen and therefore the low energy density by volume of the gas. The storage of hydrogen has been performed for a long time but in relatively modest amounts – even though the global demand for hydrogen is over 70 million tonnes (as discussed in a previous article,  The Uses of Hydrogen ), most of this hydrogen is produced and used on site rather than stored. As such, large scale storage solutions, which are going to be needed, are not yet commonplace. There are a number of options for storing hydrogen such as keeping it as a gas, storing it as a liquid or as a chemical compound. Each storage method has its pros and cons related to the amount of hydrogen that needs to be stored, safely. The storage solution needs to consider the energy (and therefore cost) required to move the hydrogen be
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Hydrogen Safety

Hydrogen is fast becoming an important part of the worldwide energy mix in both transport and stationary applications (such as a HydroGenesis system). Storage of large amounts of energy generated from intermittent renewable sources is driving a tightening and specification of safety standards. In 2015, a European consortium funded by European Union Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking, published a detailed report titled Hyindoor on the basics of hydrogen safety. The report has been adopted and disseminated by various international bodies such as the ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) and country specific regulatory institutions, such as the Health and Safety Executive (HSE.gov.uk) in the UK. The report details a lot of risks and raises awareness of the reasons why strict adherence to safety is important. The main conveyed message is that simple processes can be followed to make the handling of hydrogen safe; points relevant to stationary storage can be summari
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The Uses of Hydrogen

We’ve already written that hydrogen was generated in the seconds after the big bang in the article ‘ What is hydrogen and why use it to store energy’   but how have we used hydrogen since it was discovered in the seventeenth century as a distinct element? A number of observations about the physical characteristics of hydrogen have led to it being used in many different ways over the years since it was discovered. Notably, it is extremely light, it is combustible, it can hold a lot of energy and in Earth’s atmospheric conditions it wants to bond with other elements to form chemical compounds rather than exist as a pure gas. One of the more infamous uses for hydrogen has been to fill balloons for buoyancy. The lightness of hydrogen when compared to ground level air means that when we fill a balloon with hydrogen it will float and with enough volume, can carry large payloads to great heights. This was first achieved in the 18th century and utilised until the 20th century as a mode of tran
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Stationary Storage: Lithium and Hydrogen

 Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another.  This much quoted line from one of the greatest minds the world has known (Albert Einstein) remains true, which is why the storage of energy, in a useful form, still remains the key. Photograph by Orren Jack Turner, Princeton, N.J. Modified with Photoshop by PM_Poon and later by Dantadd., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons For well over 150 years hydrocarbons have been the main energy carrier that the world has exploited, but now due to carbon emission concerns, we are looking to other energy vectors. Energy storage comes in different forms with no single solution fitting all applications in terms of power density, discharge rate, life-time and efficiency. Rechargeable batteries (specifically Lithium Ion) are the front runner for a number of applications at present due to their ability to provide a good fit-for-purpose solution for many uses. Batteries are very good at variable discharge ra
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