Nobel laureate hopes startup can obtain hydrogen storage breakthrough

A California-based startup backed by two pioneering scientists, certainly one of whom is a Nobel laureate, believes it’s on the cusp of a “quantum leap” within the hydrogen vitality race.

H2MOF, which was co-founded in 2021, is working to develop an answer for hydrogen storage by deploying the most recent developments within the discipline of molecularly engineered supplies.

It says a breakthrough in what it regards as the best problem going through the hydrogen economic system is only a matter of time.

“The manufacturing of hydrogen, so far as I am conscious, is a settled drawback,” professor Fraser Stoddart, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2016 and one of many co-founders of H2MOF, advised CNBC through videoconference.

“There are ample environment friendly methods of manufacturing hydrogen. The massive problem that is still is to retailer it in a way that shops a variety of it at low pressures and ambient temperatures,” Stoddart mentioned. “I’m assured that a technique or one other we are going to get there after all.”

Hydrogen is the lightest and most considerable component within the universe, and has lengthy been billed as certainly one of many potential vitality sources that would play a pivotal position within the inexperienced transition.

Remodeling hydrogen into gas requires vitality. If produced utilizing renewable vitality, hydrogen’s solely local weather footprint is water, making it a beautiful choice for purposes reminiscent of transportation and electrical energy era.

At present, most hydrogen is produced utilizing fossil fuels reminiscent of coal and pure fuel, a course of that generates planet-warming emissions.

Professor Omar Yaghi, founding father of reticular chemistry discipline of science and co-founder of H2MOF, mentioned the corporate is searching for to compress hydrogen right into a small quantity with out having to make use of excessive stress or low temperatures.

“That is actually the holy grail of the sector,” Yaghi mentioned. “How can we retailer sufficient hydrogen at room temperature and have the ability to use it for vehicle fueling.”

H2MOF’s co-founders say they’re hoping the agency can overcome the excessive prices and vitality calls for related to conventional hydrogen storage strategies by designing prototype tanks that may retailer the energy-rich gas in a stable state.

Yaghi, who invented metal-organic framework (MOF) supplies, offering the inspiration for the startup’s title, mentioned it was tough to say exactly when H2MOF’s expertise may have the ability to obtain a dramatic enchancment in hydrogen storage capability and security.

“However I’d say that within the subsequent couple of years we should always have the ability to make one other quantum leap ahead,” Yaghi mentioned.

Hydrogen energy has been gaining momentum regardless of international headwinds reminiscent of rising rates of interest and provide chain points.

Nations together with america, Germany, Japan and Australia have introduced or up to date nationwide hydrogen methods lately, searching for to increase their reliance on the fuel to shift to a low-carbon economic system.

An trade report printed late final 12 months by the Hydrogen Council, a enterprise group, discovered that the hydrogen challenge pipeline had climbed to $570 billion, a 35% improve from simply six months earlier.

The report mentioned that whereas development in international hydrogen investments by means of to 2030 remained strong, additional tasks would must be introduced and present tasks would wish to mature quicker.

Samer Taha, CEO and co-founder of H2MOF, mentioned an “intermediate answer” to the hydrogen storage problem would seemingly be achieved in just a few years.

“However reaching the holy grail? Most likely greater than a few years however not essentially many years,” Taha advised CNBC through videoconference. “From the pace of analysis progress we see and being accelerated by AI and all these pc generated fashions, I predict that it’s a matter of years not many years.”

H2MOF’s Stoddart endorsed his colleague’s timeline. “However it’s all the time very tough to foretell the long run,” he added.

Critics of hydrogen say that whereas the gas can play an necessary position within the vitality transition, it might probably achieve this solely in a means that’s really climate-aligned. In any other case, it dangers growing health-harming air pollution and stalling clear vitality progress.

“There are challenges for certain,” Taha mentioned. “Electrical energy can not actually remedy all of the demand necessities of vitality in all segments and all sectors. The one means to try this is that you must present another gas that has excessive vitality depth, related or higher than a fossil gas, and at the moment the cleanest choice we’ve is hydrogen.”

He added, “My level is eventually we are going to attain a bottleneck the place no extra electrification might be finished and it’s essential to present another gas, and that is hydrogen.”