Meeting Net Zero targets will require large volumes of low-carbon hydrogen to decarbonize hard to abate industrial sectors, energy hubs and onboard maritime transport. However, regions like Europe and East Asia face shortages and high prices for low carbon hydrogen so need to import it. The lack of efficient long-distance transport solutions is a major challenge, with existing technologies adding up to 80%-300% to the cost of producing hydrogen. That is where Spain’s H2SITE comes in.
“There is a huge disconnection between where hydrogen is produced and where it is needed. Our goal is to enable the hydrogen economy by making it more cost effective to transport it,” says Guillermo García-Miguel, H2SITE’s head of product.
Separation technologies are expected to play a critical role in the suite of innovations required to overcome the challenge of building a hydrogen supply chain and build a reliable, scalable, and efficient low-carbon hydrogen economy. The four-year-old Spanish scale-up has developed a proprietary membrane separator technology which enables more cost-effective hydrogen separation from gas streams and easy-to-transport molecules, such as ammonia or methanol, adding a comparatively low 5% to 10% to cost while helping customers meet sustainability goals.
The system enables the use of hydrogen in currently available infrastructure to facilitate the storage and transport of hydrogen over long distances at the most competitive cost, while protecting existing gas consumers and enabling new applications for the decarbonization of industry.
The company has so far raised a total of €60 million from backers that include energy companies Enagás, Engie and Equinor.
H2SITE is one of 120 scale-ups in the EIC Scaling Club, an arm of the European Innovation Council which focuses on practical ways to help the Continent’s deep tech scale-ups. It was one of the scale-ups participating in the Club’s Ambition Forum at the University of Latvia in Riga on September 3. (The Innovator’s Editor-in-Chief is on the Council of the EIC Scaling Club)
The Bilbao-based scale-up’s partners include Spain’s Enagás and Repsol. A large steel company is piloting the technology and H2Site is planning to target other sectors, such as the chemical industry, Garcia-Miguel said during an interview at the Ambition Forum in Riga.
H2SITE has so far built and operated 15 projects in Western Europe and is now developing large-scale infrastructure first-of-a-kind projects in North America, the EU and Asia Pacific.
Carriers like ammonia or methanol offer promising options for long-distance transport given their well-established manufacturing process, supply chain and regulatory framework, while offering higher energy densities and simpler storage requirements compared to liquid hydrogen.
H2SITE s ammonia cracking process makes the long-haul use of hydrogen as a fuel on maritime vessels more efficient than existing options, Garcia-Miguel says.
To decarbonize the maritime sector, the ammonia industry must reduce ship fuel consumption despite the expanding ammonia ship fleet. Additionally, it necessitates replacing power systems with decarbonized or low-emission fuels like green ammonia fuel. This shift applies not only to new vessels but also requires retrofitting existing ones to comply with regulations.
Ammonia cracking is gaining traction as a potential hydrogen carrier for onboard applications. It can be used directly in engines, or it can be cracked into hydrogen and used in fuel cells. Before hydrogen is used, purification is necessary, especially if traces of ammonia are present. Not surprisingly other scale-ups, including the U.S.’s Amogy, are offering ammonia cracking solutions.
H2SITE’s membrane reactors ensure all the ammonia is transformed, while delivering a high purity hydrogen to the fuel cell in a single process step, says Garcia-Miguel.
Ammonia provides nearly double the energy density of liquid hydrogen, even at milder storage conditions. H2SITE says it efficiently reacts with ammonia, separating hydrogen of molecules of ammonia in a single step, operating at lower temperatures and eliminating the need for a second ammonia cracking process.
“We can convert hydrogen in amounts as little as 2% with 98% efficiency and 99.7% purity for use directly by a fuel cell,” he says. H2Site’s process has low emissions, making it greener than competing solutions, he says.
The steel industry – and any other industry that uses large ovens to heat products can also benefit from H2Site’s technology, says Garcia-Miguel. The ovens emit fumes containing hydrogen and are hard to cool down. “We can separate the materials and create more hydrogen from the carbon monoxide and vapor and clean H20,” he says, helping companies take a circular approach.
H2SITE’s technology is a spin-off of joint research conducted by Spain’s Technalia and the University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The intellectual property was transferred to H2Site in 2021. The company has two CTOs – one for membranes and one for reactors. Both positions are held by the original researchers on the project. CEO Andrés Galnares, an experienced entrepreneur and former head of business development at Engie, is among the founders.
The company says it plans to use the €36 million it raised in its latest Series B funding round in January to support the company’s next industrialization and commercialization milestones, including multi tons per day hydrogen production capacity in operation by 2026, and addressing several end-use markets such as large scale and decentralized ammonia cracking, natural hydrogen production in the U.S and maritime decarbonization applications.
In the January round H2SITE received support from new co-lead investors Hy24, a low-carbon hydrogen pure-play investment manager, through its Clean Hydrogen Equipment Fund, and SC Net Zero Ventures, a climate tech venture capital fund with focus on industrial and mobility decarbonization, managed by Suma Capital, a pioneer in sustainable and impact investments.
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