This Chennai-based start-up can bring in hydrogen to trucks faster

It is an electric truck, but is not supplied electricity either by fuel cells or overhead lines. 

If the Chennai-based start-up, Aerostrovilos' plans come to fruition -- there is no reason to believe why they won't -- we could be seeing hydrogen getting into long-distance, heavy-duty transport faster than we now project.

This company, in which recently Tube Investments of India, picked up 25 per cent stake for Rs 3.4 crore, is testing a prototype of a system which involves a small gas turbine on board a truck that generates electricity. The turbine can be fueled by diesel, natural gas or hydrogen, but only for flexibility--the larger, long-term aim is for aiding hydrogen based transport.

The generator is run by a single shaft micro gas turbine engine. It is a highly fuel flexible IC engine, which can be run on any liquid fuels (biodiesel, bioethanol etc) or gaseous fuels (natural gas, biogas, landfill gas etc) or hydrogen, says the company's website. 

Between the gas turbine, about 60 kW, and the motors sits a battery, to function as a buffer. With this architecture, Aerostrovilos has taken its design to the two leading Indian truck manufacturers -- Ashok Leyland and Tata Motors. Both will soon test Aerostrovilos' system, reports the Business Line newspaper.

This system is claimed to be superior to the conventional fuel cell powered trucks in two ways. One, it is far cheaper. A fuel cell costs $1,000 a kW; Aerostrovilos aims to be selling its contrivance for $100.

Second, while fuel cells require to be fed with 99.999 per cent pure hydrogen, the gas turbine says okay to even a fuel that has only 70 per cent hydrogen.

Testing will be completed in a couple of months. The, sometime around March next year, Aerostrovilos will go in for another round of funding, for something like $4million, to make the product market-ready.

Hydrogenium Resources: An Indian company that wants to tap into East European funds and technology for producing hydrogen in India

Hydrogenium Resources, a recently-formed company, intends to tap into East European countries for funds and technology, to set up hydrogen production plants in India, from where the gas would be exported back to the European countries, the Business Line newspaper has reported.

The idea of Umesh Sachdev, the founder of the Hydrogenium Resources, is like this: The European Union has allocated money to all its members for promoting hydrogen economy. These East European countries, therefore have access to funds, but do not have the scale for putting up hydrogen plants. Some of them also have some technology.

India, on the other hand, can bring to the table its frugal manufacturing capabilities and, of course, scale. Sachdev reckons that producing hydrogen in India would turn out to be cheaper. While he has not given out much details, since the exercise is still in its nascent stages, he has said that Hydrogenium has initiated talks with several companies.

Hydrogenium Resources also has plans for another line of business in India. The company intends to put up small electrolysers alongside rooftop solar plants. A problem peculiar to India, which has been hampering growth of rooptop solar in India, is that the local utilities, financially distressed as they are, are loathe to letting people putting up their rooftop solar capacities, fearing loss of business. As such, they do their best to prevent it. One of the ways of doing so is to refuse to buy any surplus power from the rooftop plans. With battery storage still being an expensive option to store surplus energy, unless the utility buys it for a fair price, all the energy produced on weekends and other holidays would go waste.

Hydrogenium Resources wants to bring in the option of producing hydrogen using such surplus energy--the gas can be stored in cylinders. The company intends to put up the electrolysers at its own cost and supply only the gas to the customer. It is in talks with a few rooftop 'open access' players, but they are still in the initial stages.

Indian oil refiner, BPCL, will tender out for 20 MW of electrolysers

 Arun Kumar, Chairman of the Indian petroleum refiner, the government of India-owned  BPCL, has told the Economic Times newspaper that his company would soon issue a tender for 20 MW of electrolyser capacity. 

The electrolyser, which would be the biggest in India, twice as much as the recently-tendered by GAIL, will be put up at BPCL's Bina refinery in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

Kumar has said that the company would soon after issues tenders for bigger capacities.

“We will not wait until long to float another tender for capacity expansion. As costs come down, we will seek more electrolysers, probably much bigger than this," Kumar has said. 

It is pertinent to mention that the refinery sector is one of the two sectors fro which the government intends to bring in a 'Green hydrogen purchase obligaiton' -- making it mandatory to buy green hydrogen. (The other sector is 'fertilizers'.)

Oil refiners have requested the government to impose an overall, company-wise purchase obligation, but not for each refinery unit, because some units have space constraints, Kumar said.

Another relevant point is that the goverment intends to sell its stake in BPCL, so as to privatize the company.

Ohmium's Made-in-India electrolyser US bound

In a first, a made-in-India electrolyser has been shipped to the US.

Ohmium International, the young manufacturer of electrolysers, which has just commenced production at its first plant, at Bangalore, India, had always said that until the Indian market for its products evolved, it could always sell to the US and elsewhere.

USA-headquartered Ohmium manufactures Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) technology-based electrolyzers to produce green hydrogen. The factory has a capacity of producing about 500 MW of electrolysis equipment per annum, which is eventually planned for expansion to 2 GW per annum.

“The first shipment of a product is a big moment for any company. This is especially exciting for Ohmium as well as all of our suppliers in India because it proves beyond a doubt that both manufacturing and technology excellence in the field of green hydrogen generation are in India’s wheelhouse. We feel that when we export Ohmium products from India we are pushing the boundaries of the Honorable Prime Minister’s AatmaNirbhar Bharat and National Hydrogen Mission—in a good way—by expanding the global impact of these programs,” said Arne Ballantine, CEO and co-founder, Ohmium.

“We are seeing significant activity in India and around the world in green hydrogen projects. Ohmium is constantly working towards providing innovative, scalable, profitable, flexible, and safe solutions that can be leveraged to achieve competitive levelized costs of hydrogen, supporting the growth of India’s economy. We are confident of Green Hydrogen as the fuel of the future owing to its enormous potential, numerous applications across sectors, and a zero-carbon footprint. Currently, our factory has a manufacturing capacity of approximately 500 MW per year, and we can rapidly expand it to 2 GW per year to facilitate India’s accelerated transition to clean energy systems,” said Ahmad Chatila, Chairman, Ohmium.

Chennai start-up developing membrane-less electrolyser for $1/kg hydrogen

A Chennai-based start-up, New Trace, is developing an electrolyser which it hopes will deliver hydrogen at $1/kg. This, it seeks to achieve by producing a membrane-less electrolyser, in which hydrogen and oxygen split and go their own ways.

                                                       Prasanta Sarkar

The start-up has already produced the prototype, which is currently being tested. “We are building a 100 kW electrolyser by 2022, which will produce hydrogen at 1.63 kg/hr; we plan to scale it up to 1 MW by 2025, which will then be capable of producing 18.76 kg/hr,” Sarkar has told the Business Line newspaper.

The company claims that its electrolysers will be five times cheaper than the conventional ones and can scale massively to meet the global demand.

In New Trace's equipment, there is natural separation of hydrogen and oxygen using a high flow of the 3D printed electrolyte in the tubes, and gravity. 

Since the evolution of hydrogen and oxygen happen at different electrodes, they can simply be flushed out by the force of the electrolyte (sometimes through pores in the electrodes).