Below is the text version for the HydroGEN Advanced Water Splitting Materials Consortium video.
The video opens with images of the U.S. at night from space and traffic driving across the Golden Gate Bridge.
Tony McDaniel, HydroGEN Deputy Director and Principal Investigator, Sandia National Laboratories: It's really a social imperative that we address, I think, the energy needs of our country in a responsible, renewable, and in a secure way.
The video cuts to images of electricity transmission lines.
Adam Weber, HydroGEN Deputy Director and Principal Investigator, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: There's initiatives at the Department of Energy like Hydrogen at Scale, which basically is saying: can we change our energy structure?
The video shows a schematic of the H2@Scale concept.
Tony McDaniel: Hydrogen is an energy carrier. And the goal is to use it in as many places as you can within the transportation and industry and other sectors in order to displace the carbon component of fueling our society. How you do it, that's a different story.
The video shows hydrogen storage tanks, a person fueling a vehicle at a hydrogen fueling station, and a power plant, then cuts to researchers working in a lab.
Huyen Dinh, HydroGEN Director and Principal Investigator, National Renewable Energy Laboratory: You need to be able to make hydrogen at low cost. You need to be able to store it at low cost. You need to be able to move it at low cost. And you need to also use it. Where the HydroGEN Energy Materials Network comes in is that we're the hydrogen production part of Hydrogen at Scale.
The video shows a series of images: researchers in a lab, an aerial view of a college campus, and people having a collaborative discussion.
Huyen Dinh: It involves people, universities, industry, and national labs across the whole U.S. And we all have this common goal: to make low-cost, renewable hydrogen so that we can have a better world.
The video shows water droplets and cuts to a slide depicting the HydroGEN core labs and water splitting technologies.
Tony McDaniel: The water molecule is a very stable molecule. And so there are various ways with which to separate the oxygen from the hydrogen. That's what we really want to do. When we say, "splitting the water molecule," we want to separate oxygen from hydrogen.
The video shows an overhead view of people working inside a large facility.
Adam Weber: There are multiple pathways that we look at to make hydrogen. And one of the main ways that we look at that is kind of closer to commercialization is electrolysis.
The video shows researchers working in a lab testing low-temperature electrolyzer cells and stacks.
Nem Danilovic, HydroGEN Principal Investigator, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: Low-temperature electrolysis is one of the pathways that I work on primarily. And in that process, we use electricity to split water. And within that, what we are looking at essentially are: what materials can we use that are non-precious metal? Or can we decrease the precious metal loading in order to reduce the cost?
The video cuts to researchers working in a materials characterization lab.
Huyen Dinh: We do material discovery. We make the materials. We characterize them. But we also have cell testing from single-cell testing, to stacks, and all the way to the whole system, the balance of plant. We do the entire scale of fuel cell and hydrogen research.
The video shows researchers working with a low-temperature electrolysis system.
Adam Weber: For high-temperature electrolysis, what we work on here is understanding really high-temperature processes, and especially as they relate to kind of nuclear-type industries.
The video shows a high-temperature electrolysis research lab.
Frances Houle, HydroGEN Principal Investigator, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: There's also hydrogen production via photoelectrochemistry. The photoelectrochemical generation of hydrogen involves placing a device in front of a solar simulator. Or up on the roof we have an on-sun solar tracker as well. So we can do measurements in both places. And watching how these devices function.
The video shows a photoelectrochemical research lab and a solar tracker on the roof of a building, then cuts to a researcher looking at an engineering diagram on a computer screen.
Tony McDaniel: And then there's a pathway within HydroGEN where―that's where my expertise is, and this is where we use solar thermal chemistry. We take these metal oxides and we expose them to very, very high temperatures. And that causes this material to desorb spontaneously its oxygen.
The video shows a solar thermochemical research lab.
And then, from there, we can take this reduced metal oxide and then we can take it into a different condition at lower temperatures and expose it to steam, and the oxygen from the water molecule will spontaneously go back into that oxide, fully oxidizing it, and the hydrogen part that we want, the H2, magically floats away.
The video shows a series of images of researchers working in different labs.
Huyen Dinh: We're using a theory-guided approach to discover new materials, figure out which materials we should start making that has the potential to split water. And then we characterize them. And then if they do or not, we go back, understand, using theory to help us understand why these materials work the way they do.
Reese Jones, HydroGEN Principal Investigator, Sandia National Laboratories: When somebody sees something in their experiment and they say, "I have no idea why this is happening," or, "I think this is happening because of this," a decent simulation model may help understand why that is happening and maybe refine some of those conjectures or theories.
The video shows researchers looking at simulation results on computer screens.
Farid El Gabaly, HydroGEN Principal Investigator, Sandia National Laboratories: It's great to be focusing on how to get the best out of my machine and don't have to worry about the best synthesized materials. Because I know the best experts are supplying those to me. I can supply the results to focus modelers. And that is very hard to have in a small team. So you have to reach across laboratories and institutions, yeah.
Nem Danilovic: The way that the consortium works is that they're externally-funded projects. They’re universities, other national labs, or industry.
The video shows several people involved in a discussion at a meeting, then cuts to researchers working in a lab.
Huyen Dinh: We have over 21 different projects across the U.S. right now working on four different water-splitting technologies. And they don't work by themselves. They work with us.
Chris Capuano, Program Manager of Research and Development, Proton OnSite: The consortium allows us to essentially move the technology quicker towards a commercial application and also allows us to make refinements and optimization to the technology which allows further penetration into those markets. I think every time we get to interact with the national labs I feel a little bit smarter after I get off the phone with them.
The video shows screenshots of the HydroGEN Data Hub and researchers discussing data together.
Tony McDaniel: All the information that flows between the national labs and the seedlings, or even within the national laboratories, that kind of fosters the entirety of the collaboration, flows through the Data Hub.
Kris Munch, HydroGEN Data Hub Lead, National Renewable Energy Laboratory: One thing the HydroGEN Data Hub is built for is to enable collaboration and the sharing of this data for hydrogen materials with the public.
Tony McDaniel: The guidance and vision from DOE and the opportunity to build something like HydroGEN and to direct our energy and our knowledge and resources―and their resources too, because it's public resources―into solving this problem, I think that can't be understated.
The video shows a group photo of more than 50 HydroGEN participants, then ends by displaying the logos for HydroGEN; the six core labs: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Idaho National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Savannah River National Laboratory; and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fuel Cell Technologies Office.