Muhaimin Iqbal
Author

Disruptive BioHydrogen Economy

Advanced Renewable

Tue , 14 May 2024 12:51 WIB

In the previous post, I shared how biohydrogen production from charcoal will provide much lower cost biohydrogen, through energy savings in the production process (https://lnkd.in/gjtVe3Z8).

What is no less interesting is the savings in logistics costs, because currently the logistics costs of hydrogen, which must use a pressure tank of 700 Bar or a temperature of minus 253 degrees Celsius, have made it much more expensive than other fuels per unit of energy. If 1 kg of fuel oil is only in the range of US$ 1.1, per kg of hydrogen is currently at $6 the lowest. Because the energy content in oil is around 45 MJ/kg, while hydrogen is 120 MJ/kg, a reasonable price of hydrogen should be around US$ 3 per kilogram.

How can this reasonable price target be achieved? Apart from the production aspects explained above, the logistics aspect must also change. Hydrogen is no longer sent in very high pressure or very cold tanks, but hydrogen is sent in solid material form as in the picture below.

This solid material or what we call SolidGas is actually powdered or compacted charcoal. Pure hydrogen can be produced from this SolidGas through 3 process stages, namely gasification, Water Gas Shift (WGS) and Membrane Reactor (MR). All three of these can be facilitated in one compact reactor that we call XH2M.

So it is enough to place the XH2M reactor at the Hydrogen Point of Sales (H2POS), then hydrogen can always be produced in situ and in-time, on the spot and when it is to be used. This step will very significantly reduce hydrogen logistics costs.

In fact, because SolidGas raw materials are abundant everywhere, local communities can always be involved in preparing SolidGas from agricultural, plantation, forest or urban solid waste. Apart from reducing the carbon footprint further, there will be new economic growth wherever this activity is held. If initially energy had to be imported and reduced GDP (a factor of poverty), it would change to community production activities that increased GDP (a factor of prosperity).

Ideally, this new energy in the form of biohydrogen is energy that is widely used by society, apart from being able to produce it themselves, it is also very clean, the CO2 emissions in the process are carbon neutral because it is processed from biomass. However, if people are not ready to use biohydrogen as energy, biohydrogen can also be processed into various types of fuel that we use today, such as LPG, etc.

The energy industry can also experience disruption like other industries, if this happens the law of disrupt or be disrupted will apply, you do it or you are the one affected by the other one who does. This low cost biohydrogen will be present at the International Conference on Renewable Energy Gas Technology (REGATEC 2024), in Lund, Sweden next week.