Commercial Operation Begins At New Green Hydrogen Plant In US

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The sudden shift in federal energy policy has not been good news for US hydrogen stakeholders, which were left holding a $5 billion bag when the federally funded Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs program was suspended. Still, fresh activity in the green hydrogen industry continues to crop up, the latest example being a solar powered electrolysis plant in Illinois.

A New Solar Powered Green Hydrogen Plant

The plant in question is the Sauk Valley Hydrogen facility, which takes up five acres in Rock Falls, Illinois under the umbrella of the Chicago-based global energy developer Invenergy. The plant is co-located with an adjacent solar array, which provides the clean kilowatts to run the electrolyzers.

On March 20, Invenergy announced that the facility is now up to speed on commercial operation, capable of producing up to 40 tons of green hydrogen annually. The facility also hosts a 400-kilogram hydrogen storage system.

In green hydrogen circles, the big question is who’s gonna pay for all this. The cost of green hydrogen has been coming down but it remains consistently higher than conventional hydrogen sourced from natural gas or coal. In the US, 95% of the hydrogen supply is extracted from natural gas.

Invenergy has an answer for that. The diversified energy firm will initially deploy the hydrogen itself, to cool the turbines at its 980-megawatt Nelson Energy Center, a gas power plant that sits right next door to the electrolyzer facility. The next-door solution reduces, if not eliminates, costs associated with hydrogen transportation.

Why Hydrogen?

Hydrogen is ubiquitous throughout modern industrial economies, though its use as a turbine coolant is new to the pages of CleanTechnica. As explained by the news organization Power Engineering, turbines were initially air cooled until the 1930’s. Hydrogen represented an efficiency improvement, enabling developers to decrease the physical footprint of generators while increasing output.

“The density of hydrogen is only 7% of the density of normal air, which reduces torque losses due to windage,” PE explains. “Reduced windage increases generator and turbine efficiency; mechanical drag is proportional to fluid or gas density, and relative to the square of the velocity of the machine.”

“Hydrogen is able to conduct heat about 50% more efficiently than air. For the same reason, the hydrogen readily gives up its heat to the coolers,” PE adds, noting that hydrogen also enables plant operators to avoid the cost of maintenance tasks required by air-cooled systems.

PE posted that article in 2022, when the price of bulk hydrogen averaged about $8.40 per 100 cubic feet in the US, based on the prevailing use of inexpensive natural gas as a feedstock.

If that sounds pretty low, it is. BNEF ran the hydrogen numbers in 2023 and came up with a cost of $0.98–$2.93 per kilogram for conventional hydrogen sourced from natural gas, compared to $4.50–$12.00 for green hydrogen.

From Green Hydrogen To Green E-Fuels

Still, in the same analysis BNEF calculated that new-build green hydrogen facilities in some markets — beginning with Brazil, China, India, Spain and Sweden — could undercut some conventional hydrogen plants on cost beginning around 2030. In 2024, the global professional services firm PwC also took note of the competitiveness potential for the US and Australia, citing copious renewable energy resources in both countries.

For the here and now, one opportunity for green hydrogen producers is beginning to emerge in the sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) movement, where interest in e-fuels is rising. E-fuels, or electrofuels, are synthetic hydrocarbon fuels that combine renewable hydrogen with carbon, typically deploying captured waste carbon from industrial operations among other sources.

Invenergy already has a head start on in that market. In addition to deploying hydrogen as a coolant at its own gas power plant, the company has engaged the startup Aether Fuels as its first off-site customer.

Aether has been working with GTI Energy on a system that can deploy captured CO2, industrial waste gas, biogas or agricultural residues to produce synthetic liquid fuels, in combination with hydrogen. The hydrogen doesn’t necessarily have to come from renewable resources, but the shipment from Invenergy indicates that Aether is pursuing new opportunities to use non-fossil inputs.

Among other recent activities, last year Aether Fuels joined with JetBlue in a Memorandum of Understanding for the delivery of SAF. On February 3, Aether also announced a similar arrangement with the Singapore Airlines Group, under which Aether’s SAF will be blended with conventional jet fuel.

Hold on to your hats. Aether launched in 2022 under the incubation wing of the tech venture firm Xora with backing from the Singapore investment firm Temasek. The company has set up an R&D hub in Chicago in support of its plans for establishing a network of commercial-scale e-fuel projects in the US and Southeast Asia.

Next Steps For Green Hydrogen In The USA

Green hydrogen activity on the R&D side is also continuing to surface on the CleanTechnica radar, one example being a solar powered, photoelectrochemical system under development by the Iowa-based startup SunHydrogen. The system integrates water electrolysis with solar panels, eliminating the need for an outside source of electricity.

Green or not, though, hydrogen stakeholders still need to address the cost of storage and transportation. “So far, the hydrogen supply chain has been hindered by a trade-off between compressed gaseous hydrogen — which is cheap to produce, but low in density — and liquid hydrogen — which is high in density, but expensive to densify (via liquefaction),” explains Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

“This trade-off has led to expensive distribution costs that have limited the adoption of hydrogen solutions,” LLNL adds.

The lab has been working with the California startup Verne on a modular, scalable solution that integrates compression and cooling, to yield high-density hydrogen without the high expense and energy consumption of liquefaction systems. The idea builds on research initiated in the 1990’s by LLNL scientist Salvador Aceves and his team.

Thirty-odd years later, Verne and LLNL announced their latest demonstration of the system, validating a substantial decrease in energy consumption. The successful demonstration opens up a new pathway for reducing the cost of hydrogen transportation. Among other uses, LLNL anticipates that data center can deploy hydrogen for off-grid power production, either in fuel cells, engines, or hydrogen-capable turbines.

That has already entered the realm of possibility, as Mitsubishi and other leading gas turbine stakeholders have already introduced dual fuel turbines that can incorporate green hydrogen.

Kirin beer fans, take note: Last month Mitsubishi announced it has embarked on a project to convert a steam boiler at the beermaker’s Chitose brewery in Japan from fossil energy to green hydrogen, so stay tuned for more on that.

Image (cropped): The US green hydrogen industry continues to exhibit signs of life, as illustrated by a new green hydrogen production plant in Illinois (courtesy of Invenergy).