View the proceedings from the 2023 Hydrogen Program Annual Merit Review.
Eric Miller, Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO): OK, so welcome back to another part of the plenary. We're going to dive deeper into the technologies. We've heard a lot about the hydrogen program. We've heard about interagency dedication to the clean hydrogen mission. We're going to take perspectives now from the program managers at HFTO who have been working in this for quite some time. And they have unique perspectives, not only from the production side, but the infrastructure as well as the end uses and all of the above.
So what we're going to do is we're going to have a bit of a fireside chat with them. And let me just make sure the slides are actually working. Are they working? Oh, more or less. Sorry, Ned. OK, that's—moving right along. OK, really quick, just a little bit of an overview of the structure of HFTO. It's changed a little bit over the past several years.
Again, you're probably familiar with how we've operated in the past. We've traditionally had a hydrogen technologies program. That was broken into hydrogen production as well as hydrogen infrastructure. It was a growing thing that had to happen. I mean, both got too big for one program.
So we have two experts going to talk about those particular subprograms, we can call them, as well. Fuel cells has been around a while. But there's a lot of innovation still going on in the fuel cell area. We'll hear about that as well. Systems development and integration is certainly key to a lot of the things bridging to the hubs, bridging to the next level of integrating with renewables that Katie talked about before.
And finally, last but not least, we do have a new subprogram, analysis codes and standards. That we've had all along, but now, it really realized—everyone needed it. So we really needed to put it under a subprogram itself to make sure that it was more effective. And with that, we're going to start talking to—this is good. All right, so ignore the slides.
But we're going to hear about it. What I'm going to do is ask Dave to talk a little bit about his team. Some of them look like that. Some of them don't. But in truth, there are some blanks anyway because there's an opportunity to grow his team and for recruitment. I'll let him talk a little bit about that himself. But Dave is here. So focus on his face. It's much more attractive than an on the slide. So Dave, tell us a little bit about what's going on in hydrogen production these days, about your team, and what some of the key priorities for meeting our targets are.
Dave Peterson, HFTO: Thanks, Eric. And my apologies to the team for who are seen there. It is a strong team of technology managers, technical project officers, fellows, and contractors. And most of the team is here this week. And for many of them, it's the first AMR they've been to. And what you will also see here are some open positions. We do have a number of vacancies. So if anyone is interested in a federal technology manager position or a hydrogen shot fellowship, please see me throughout the week.
David Turk, U.S. Energy Department: --the week. And with that—
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Go ahead with your recap.
Eric Miller: Yeah.
David Turk: OK.
Eric Miller: OK. Let's do a fireside chat because the slides are not coming out exactly as they're supposed to. Won't you tell us about the program. The structure of the program and some of the key priorities in terms of meeting our goals.
David Turk: Sure. Within hydrogen production, we're focused on generating the hydrogen for it then to be delivered, stored, and used. There are any number of different ways to produce hydrogen. A number of different pathways and we're focused primarily on ones that use renewable or clean resources.
There was supposed to be a list of resources there, but they include clean electricity, water, biomass, which are then subsequently converted to hydrogen, and there are three main pathways that our subprogram is involved with. There is electrolysis which is a near term solution—we see as a near-term solution that we can further classify into low temperature and high temperature electrolyzers based on operating temperature.
We also have two longer term pathways. There's direct solar water splitting, which there's some talk about already with respect to the hydrogen shot, and the hydrogen energy earthshot is really a guiding force between a lot of what we do. Two of the direct solar water splitting pathways are photoelectric chemical hydrogen production, as well as solar thermal chemical hydrogen production.
And we're also supporting work in biological hydrogen production, including, for instance, fermentation and photo-biological approaches. Now as far as priorities are concerned, this was mentioned earlier as well, but we have two primary cost goals that we need to achieve. We need to meet by 2026. We need to validate that we've reached $2 per kilogram hydrogen via water electrolysis as this is stipulated in the Bill Section 16 clean hydrogen electrolyzer program.
And then more generally we also have the hydrogen energy earth shot, which is a Dewey Wide initiative. And need to meet what is a rather aggressive target of $1 per kilogram hydrogen by 2031. Given the visibility of the clean hydrogen electrolyzer program and the resources available, one of our priorities today, and one of the focus areas is on electrolysis. Electrolyzers are a commercial technology.
However, they are not capable of hitting either of these cost targets today. In our techno economic analysis have shown that there needs to be improvement on a number of different fronts to get there. And there are multiple different pathways which are part dependent on the electrolyzer type, meaning something like your PEM electrolyzer will have a different improvement pathway than what would be required for solid oxide electrolyzers.
And in order to get the costs down, we can really fact there's essentially three key cost drivers. The first one, I think this is pretty clear and folks know by now, is we need to closely integrate the electrolyzers with low cost, clean electricity sources, which in some cases will require the electrolyzers to operate dynamically in modes which aren't traditionally geared to do so, in order to be able to take full advantage of low cost electricity when it's from an intermittent or variable source.
The second key cost driver is we need to reach high volume manufacturing. We need to get to economies of scale, meaning in excess of a gigawatt per year at a manufacturing facility, in order to drive down electrolyzer capital costs. And the last cost driver is technology advancements. We need to continue to push on that front as well.
The advancements needed will vary by technology, but in general, we need to improve performance, efficiency, increase durability lifetime, as well as to decrease capital costs, including by ways such as using lower cost materials. And there's a lot of work to be done but with concerted efforts in these areas, we believe that we will ultimately be able to hit these cost targets. And with that—
Eric Miller: Thanks, Dave. That's great. Let's actually keep the fireside chat going and move on to Ned, and let's hear what's going on in the infrastructure space with respect to storage and delivery technologies.
Ned Stetson, HFTO: Yeah, I just hope this doesn't pretend what these slides are going to look like tomorrow morning. Do you want to—
[LAUGHTER]
Eric Miller: Yeah.
Ned Stetson: Yeah, so you can sort of see some of the core of the team here for the hydrogen infrastructure technology team. The core team has been together for several years now, so it is a good well-functioning team. Again, we have some open positions, however, I am glad to announce that we actually have a new fellow starting in August. He's a recent graduate in mechanical engineering from a University of Pennsylvania. He'll be starting in August. We're in the final stages of getting approval for [INAUDIBLE] from Pacific North National Labs to join us to help out with a lot of hydrogen carrier work.
We have two open Fed positions but we actually have two candidates which we're currently going through the federal hiring process now. So hopefully we're going to have those two positions filled here very soon. However, we are still looking for some contractors to help support the program. So if you're interested in helping to support the program, we do have some positions in the contracting roles. So, talk a little bit about the hydrogen infrastructure activities, we're sort of like the meat of the hydrogen sandwich.
On the one side, we have the hydrogen production. So Dave just talked about all those different technologies we're looking at producing hydrogen molecules. But at the other end, we have the in-uses. And we have to get that hydrogen molecule from the point of production to the point of in-use, and it requires—actually this slide is working better.
Eric Miller: You can put the slide up. This one works.
Ned Stetson: Yeah, so it requires taking that hydrogen molecule, converting it. So it's compressing it, liquifying it, hydrogenating the carrier. All of modes of transportation for each of those different forms of hydrogen. And then putting it back in the right form to dispense it to the in-use, under the conditions that the in-use needs, and in a safe manner. So that is very challenging. You take for instance on vehicles, light duty vehicles, which we spent a couple of decades working on light duty vehicles.
So they're now commercial in California and few other places in the world. We were targeting about less than 2 kilograms a minute dispensing rates. For heavy duty, we're now talking going from 5, 6 kilograms on board of vehicle, to [INAUDIBLE] from 60 to 100 and plus kilograms on board a vehicle, and they want to dispense in 10, 15 minutes, which means we're now looking at dispensing it at over five times faster rates. And we still have to do it in a safe manner. So this requires developing new compressors, new technology, new chillers, new nozzles even, in receptacles.
And right now there's not a single it's not a consensus on how they want to use the hydrogen onboard. We have companies looking at compressed hydrogen. We have companies look at local hydrogen. So we're having to work under multiple phases of hydrogen per storage on board a vehicle. And of course, then we start talking about all the other heavy duty applications for hydrogen, especially if you look at decarbonization, looking at what we need to do is dispense hydrogen to steel manufacturing plants, ammonia plants for energy storage.
So it's a very broad technology space that we work in, and it requires a lot of different disciplines. And we've got a challenge ahead of us because, as Sunita pointed out from the analysis, she showed the cost or the price people are willing to pay for hydrogen to be commercial. That's the price of producing hydrogen, but then all the costs associated with getting it to the in-use in the format they need. So we need to really drive down those costs to make it competitive.
Eric Miller: All right, Ned, thanks. Let's turn to Demetrius. Let's see what your team might look like.
Demetrius Papageorgopoulos, HFTO: Different format, some success. I think the system is getting to like us a bit more. So in terms of Fuel Cell Technologies team, it's a mix of the more experienced elements of it. People have been around in the office for years. And then we have a group of new hires [INAUDIBLE] since the last day [INAUDIBLE], and we're all working together, and are really efficient, and great, great manner.
So I'm really happy about that since I've got everyone in the audience, I'm going to extend out my congratulations for all the good work that they've done and keep good work on. What I want to focus on is that we do have a few open positions, and those are for Fed positions, and as well as for a fellow. And the reason we have those positions is that we are continuing our applied RD&D work in the fuel cell area, but we're also shifting some of our emphasis on manufacturing and recycling to address bipartisan infrastructure law provisions.
So with that, reach out to myself or to my colleagues and look for those getting some resumes in as soon as possible to continue the work. So, let me just tell you what we do in fuel cell technologies, and in principle, I was going to use the analogy of the meat or the cheese and the sandwich, but we are a conversion technology, right? My favorite conversion technology obviously, and we are there to be able to utilize delivered hydrogen to enable those and use applications.
Fuel cells use a wide variety of fuels, primary fuels, and have applicability, not only for the transportation sector, but also for stationary and long duration energy stores for the grid and reusable systems. The focus of fuel cells as an effort and as an applied RD and D program is basically to develop technologies that are competitive with incumbent and emerging technologies. So in order to do that, we have market driven targets.
So there are targets that we need to meet, not targets that would allow us to claim that we develop a technology appropriately, but targets that would prove and demonstrate that we are competitive for those end use applications. Our focus is on transportation, and particularly heavy duty transportation with cross-cutting benefits from developing the technology for medium duty applications as well as for stationary applications.
As an example of market driven targets, we are looking to develop fuel cells for heavy duty applications at a cost of $80 per kilowatt, at high volume, as well as and very importantly, this is the differentiation factor to, for instance, light duty. We need to further develop particular technologies to be able to meet those strict requirements for heavy duty applications. Example being 25,000 hours for long haul trucks. One that I also want to mention that, in order to meet our cost targets and at the same time be able to meet performance and durability, there are two aspects.
You can, and we need to further develop the technology but at the same hand, in order to meet those costs targets, we will need to be able to enable economies of scale. So that's where the bill provisions come in on the manufacturing side. They would allow us to be able to reap the benefits by being able to get those economies of scale through manufacturing innovation. And it's not only being to be able to make fuel cell systems and other clean hydrogen technology components at that scale, and fast enough, and to meet that scale, but we have to do it in an equitable and environmentally sustainable manner.
This is where the last part of what I wanted to mention in this brief discussion, is the role that recycling plays into this. So the bill provisions look at manufacturing. We are also focusing on developing the component supply chain, and for that efficient recovery and recycling is very important. With that, getting to those cost targets again, the impact that—reducing the amount of, for instance, platinum group metals, is to get the cost but also to be able to meet supply chain demand is very important. And with that, all right. handing over.
Eric Miller: Thanks Demetrius. Let's see what we got here. OK. Well, Jesse, you can describe your team and match up and down.
Demetrius Papageorgopoulos: A few words isn't worth this picture.
Eric Miller: I'll turn it over to you with [INAUDIBLE] systems, the integration and development.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Jesse Adams, HFTO: --development and integration, yes. So this is—I'll start off by addressing that. Formerly known as Technology Acceleration, so we are now going with systems development and integration. That just matches our congressional line items. So everything is sort of in unison now, but I'll just start by saying, how awesome is it to be presenting in front of real people and not a computer screen. So that is awesome. The team this year is done a wonderful job.
A lot of resources from myself and my team have gone into the original clean hydrogen hubs and helping OCED with that. But everyone in team has done a wonderful job picking up the slack. We've got a lot thrown our way. It's been crazy busy but the team has done a wonderful job. As with the others, we also have some open positions. We have five openings right now. Two on the federal side, two fellows, and one contractor position.
So again, if anybody's interested, you know anybody with the backgrounds who might be interested, come talk to me. Send me an email. Talk to my team. We'll be here all week. I'll be in the systems development and integration session. Also, next slide, see what this looks like. It's colorful. So just Dave, Ned, Demetrius, already did a great job of explaining all of the R&D pillars. So SDI is a little bit of a shift.
This is a higher technology readiness level, and overall, our goal here is to bridge the gap between R&D and deployments by using first of the kind integrated hydrogen demonstrations. So since we want to take all of the R&D, all the components, all the good stuff that these guys are working on, we want to integrate those together. We want to package them. We want to put all these different components together with sort of focus on looking at what are these future end uses that we need to be pushing hydrogen into.
So the first one, industrial and chemical processes. This is things like taking hydrogen and reducing iron ore to make steel. Hydrogen for ammonia, hydrogen for industrial heat and processing. The second one there, industrial clean integrated energy systems. So that's where we're really taking electrolyzers. We're trying to integrate them with things like renewables. Integrate them with nuclear that you heard on the earlier panel from our nuclear energy office.
Long duration energy storage. Also things like prime power, backup power. And then the third bucket here, I'm sort of breaking up my team, is focused in on transportation. So again the theme here, medium and heavy duty transportation are a big focus area going forward, but we're also looking at ultra heavy duty now. So this is what we sort of coined ultra heavy duty which includes marine, rail. We're doing a lot in mining now, construction equipment, things like that.
And of course, with that, we need to also include all the fueling that's going to be necessary to have that fast refueling. So of course, with all these cool new end uses, we're going to learn a lot. Things are going to go good. Things are going to go really bad. But we're going to get a lot of data, and I want to feed all of that back into our systems analysis team, into our R&D teams, so that we can learn and ultimately—it got fixed. Look at that. It's magic.
So validate the technology, integrate these different systems together, and then assess all the commercial readiness. And along the way, because we're sort of working on my team a higher tier level type area, I think some of these enabling activities are really key to sort of manufacturing, safety codes and standards, and workforce development. So we need to be working closely with all those key enabling activities to sort make sure that we meet some of our end targets. So I think I will stop there.
Eric Miller: Yeah. No, thanks Jesse. Now all of what you heard about, all these sub programs rely very heavily on analysis as well as the development of relevant codes and standards. And this has been—we've recognized this for a long time but now we're fortunate to have a subprogram dedicated to these areas. So Neha tell us a little bit more about that, and let's see if you have a team.
Neha Rustagi, HFTO: All right. So within the systems analysis and safety codes and standards program, we've got two prongs. So there's the systems analysis team, which includes Mark, Lina, senior advisor, Thomas Breen, who manages a lot of our activities and support of the inseparate bill like the National Clean Hydrogen Roadmap activities. And we've been really fortunate to have two details from Argonne and NREL, Michael, and others who've been really invaluable over the course of the past year.
And then on the safety codes and standards side, as I think a lot of folks know, Laura Hill leads that team with a lot of great support from Christine Watson, who manages a lot of our sensor activities. And like all the other teams, we have many openings across both federal roles, contractors, and fellows. So please reach out if you're interested, and would be really happy to discuss further.
So if we go to the next slide, within the systems analysis purview, our focus is on funding tools and conducting analyzes that inform optimal deployments. And then on the safety codes and standards side, we fund R&D that informs safety code and standards. So our focus over the course of the past year across both teams has been to inform deployments by making information more readily accessible, and then also by helping prioritize where deployments can make the biggest impact.
So one good example would be over the past year, our focus has been taking the GREET tool, which folks may be familiar. It's used by over 50,000 stakeholders worldwide to characterize lifecycle emissions of different fuels, including hydrogen. Our focus in the past year has been to make it more user friendly if you're characterizing emissions of a particular hydrogen production facility. And so that web-based interface is now in beta testing and going into the next 1 to 2 years, we're trying to make the rest of the tool more user friendly as well.
We're also working on developing sustainability criteria to inform future deployments. So there's a team led by NREL in collaboration with several external stakeholders and international community, working on priority sustainability criteria. And again, if folks are interested in participating, please reach out afterward. Happy to connect you to that team.
And then relatedly on the safety codes and standard side, there's a team led by a Sandia Pacific Northwest National Lab in NREL that have been developing a tool that tells you basically what codes and standards you have to follow if you're building a particular type of deployment. And we're trying to carry that best practice over into the permitting space as well.
So we've been doing a ton of listening sessions to better understand how do we can support streamlining of permitting of hydrogen deployments. And so there too, if folks are interested in providing feedback, please reach out. But basically, across both of those teams are focuses on supporting near-term deployments by addressing gaps and making information more accessible. Thanks, Neha. We're—ah, good. We actually have a few more slides here but we're going to wrap up pretty quickly.
I do want to show the slides. You need to show that several times about the collaboration. I do want to say that, and I do want to reiterate what Sunita said about this being the most amazing team ever assembled on planet earth, right. So thank you for that. And the collaborative and spirit of this team of this group led by these leaders, I think has been inspirational, not only for the success of HFTO, but it's also been inspirational to the DOE wide cross office mission of clean hydrogen. So I really want to applaud them, and applaud the whole DOE office for doing this. This is what hands are for.
Eric Miller: All right. I do want to give you an opportunity just really quickly. We'll keep it with you, Neha, and we'll go back the other way because this is an AMR, and many of your projects are being highlighted here. This is a really exciting time. Just kind of give us a flavor of what to expect from the AMR, or maybe some highlights that you want to make people aware of. Let's just quickly go down the line and then—but then everyone should go look to the agenda and find all of these projects, and see them all week. But maybe just give us quick highlights.
Neha Rustagi: Sure. So several of the projects I mentioned will be presenting on Thursday. So please attend that Thursday am session. You'll get to meet the PIs, and like I said, the goal of these efforts is to support deployment. So we really do want to get feedback on what we're doing right, and what could be improved. So again, the lifecycle analysis tools will present the high scan tool on codes and standards that we'll be presenting.
And then one thing I didn't mention but another big focus of the past year has been advancing hydrogen sensor technologies to better understand the potential for hydrogen as an indirect greenhouse gas. And so those projects won't be presenting this time around because they were recently selected, but next year stay tuned, and you'll hear more about that as well. All right, thanks Neha. Jesse?
Jesse Adams, HFTO: All right, yeah, thanks. Yes, I'm giving the SDI overview tomorrow morning, and all of day one is focused in on transportation. So that includes fueling medium, heavy duty, ultra heavy duty type demonstrations and analysis. We have our three new super truck projects that Sunita showed slide on earlier. Sort of their first year's worth of work will be highlighted. So it'll be at GM Ford and Daimler. So come check that out.
And we also have our CT project on the UPS delivery trucks. That's another fun one for tomorrow. Then shifting gears to Wednesday. Sort of a non transportation. Again, more electrolyzers integrated with renewables, and also nuclear. So a couple of highlights there. The Constellation Project, the nine-mile points are sort of nation's first behind the meter integrated electrolyzer. There with an electrolyzer, and we also have a new partnership with the wind energy technology office, funding a new analysis project at NREL.
That's really looking at direct renewables or winds to hydrogen, and different—how do those get constructed together. Do you direct couple like an electrolyzer per turbine or not? And some of what we're finding there is like, yeah, you can get a little bit lower cost, better efficiency. But really some of the advantages there are being able to have that wind come on online a lot faster. It's the way from permitting to connect to the grid, and at the end side, looking at the end use of steel or ammonia.
Now we can say really stable hydrogen prices and you don't have to worry about the fluctuation of grid prices. So some really cool analysis there. We've learned a lot. On Thursday, we will start off with our hydrogen to steel projects or our high steel projects, and then we'll get an update from Caterpillar and a data center project there at Microsoft, hydrogen for backup power, and then finish the day off there with a new project at Borrego Springs, which is an interesting disadvantaged community in California.
We're going to look at integrating hydrogen into a microgrid, as well as some power electronics projects closing out that day. So that's just a quick highlight. It's really where the rubber meets the road, literally. so come check it out. We have lots of exciting projects to give you guys updates on.
Eric Miller: Yeah, thanks Jesse. Demetrius, want to give us some highlights?
DEMETRIUS: First of all, all the projects are awesome. So I don't know. I don't want to pick out any favorites here. That said, starting with cost analysis efforts that we are supporting, you will see that we've reduced the cost based, just in comparison to the last year's baseline for fuel cells for heavy duty applications. The focus and the emphasis of the whole more or less the whole subprogram is on those heavy duty applications.
And for that, we have the core lab work, as well as the industry university projects within the million mile fuel cell truck consortium. That is looking at membrane electrode assembly components, membrane assembly integration aspects, as well as balance of plant error management. Further along, our portfolio does include long term technologies, and we have another consortium that's looking at platinum group metal free catalysts.
Electricad, they are presenting as well. And last but not least, let me highlight the work that Los Alamos is doing on the minority serving institution fellowship program, as well as the [INAUDIBLE]. With that, I'll hand it over—
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Eric Miller: Thanks, Demetrius. Ned?
Ned Stetson: Yeah, so well, first of all, for posters. Our posters—there's the theme. The posters will actually be tomorrow evening. We start orals tomorrow morning. They'll be given an overview, then we launch into some of the storage activities. So we'll start off with the HyMARC consortia, which is leading a lot of the material development efforts and working with the material development projects. Will move into the carbon fiber projects. So we have a down select coming up.
We've had a major issue or major activity going on with carbon fiber. We have currently three projects still in the running. At the end of this fiscal year we've been going through and down select to select one in the running which is the one which seems to have the most promise to—basically, we're looking at to just try to reduce the cost of carbon fiber going into composite over our pressure vessels by 50%. So this is a major effort.
So at the end of this fiscal year, we're doing it down to one project, which will be going forward with an end goal of demonstrating the carbon fiber in a tank in a few years. We then actually move into some liquid storage activities we have. We have a project Shell which is looking at ultra large scale storage. We're talking about tanks which are 4 to 20 times larger than the current existing liquid hydrogen storage sphere in the world.
So I mean these are ultra large scale, and talk about collaboration. We actually just settled on the NASA Marshall Flight Center, which is where we're going to put the prototype tank. So after the project ends, the NASA Marshall will be able to continue to use that tank afterwards. So that's a win-win for us. We'll then move into high blend, which is looking at the blending of natural gas and hydrogen.
So we're moving into the infrastructure side. And then that'll be followed up with some of the fueling work we're doing, as well as a lot of material compatibility in the [INAUDIBLE] consortia. So that will wrap up the program for us.
Eric Miller: Thanks Ned. Let's see if we can get the faces up for Dave's team again. All right, go ahead Dave.
David Turk: So for production, we will have 2 and 1/2 days of oral presentations, following an overview tomorrow morning. The rest of the day's activities will be focused on consortia activities, as well as a number of LTE and HD manufacturing projects that we're funding. I suggest for the attending the consortia, where we're funding both H2NEW and HydroGEN and both these consortia were able to expand over the past year.
So there should be some new and exciting results there. Then Wednesday's activities will be focused on materials development. Series of projects for 4 different advanced water splitting technologies. There's PEC, STCH, LTE and HTE, as well as a techno-economic analysis focused talk. And we'll end the day with an effort we have in benchmarking and protocol standardization. Then on Thursday we'll have half a day of talks, which will be focused on biological hydrogen production approaches.
And as far as posters are concerned, the main poster session is tomorrow, but I also want to point out that on Wednesday there will be a couple posters, and this is something that we're doing in conjunction with SGI, and it's something Sunita brought up as well. So we're excited to kick off efforts to expand electrolyzer stack and system testing up to 10 megawatt scale, and invite folks to stop by those posters in order to see. This is meant to be industry resource so it'd be great to get folks engaged in that process early on. And yep. that covers production.
Eric Miller: All right. Thanks, Dave. Thanks all. Let's join me in thanking all of our program leaders from the HFTO.