18. Invention, IPR and Income

This week I worked on defining my final project idea.

My final project is a device for breaking water into hydrogen and oxygen by electricity in order to create hydrogen. The process is called electrolysis.

Who is the project for?

This section tells, who this project is aimed for.

Properties of hydrogen

Hydrogen is a flammable gas with a specific energy of approximately 120 MJ/kg. This is almost three times the specific energy of diesel or gasoline, so hydrogen is quite economical way to store energy when compared by weight. However, achieving a good energy density requires compressing hydrogen into the liquid form. Generally, hydrogen is easier to store for longer periods of time than electricity. Transmission of hydrogen can be done in pipes instead of wires. Hydrogen flame is really hot. When using oxygen, which is a byproduct when producing hydrogen, the flame temperature can exceed 3000 degrees C. In the air the flame temperature can exceed 2000 degrees C. These temperatures are only a few hundreds of degrees below the flame temperatures of acetylene with the same oxidizers.

If there is electricity and water available, then the hydrogen can be produced. Generally producing acetylene, methane and other comparable flammable gases require an access to an fossile fuel source or bioreactor. Hydrogen is also lighter than air and can be used to provide buoyancy inside the atmosphere, even if after Hindenburg accident the element has been considered unsafe element for passeger transportation. A perfect burining of hydrogen produces only water vapour as the exhaust gas. While water vapor itself is still a grenhouse gas, there are natural processes which decrease the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere. It rains down as water. Hydrogen and oxygen can also be used as a fuel to fuel cell technology in order to produce electricity catalytically.

In cases where there is a lot of energy available at daytime but no resources to store it efficiently, using the excess power to break water is an an interesting alternative. Especially when breaking water quite low tech process. The World Bank has been studying the use of hydrogen in the developing countries. In order to create hydrogen you need only electricity, water, durable or expendable electrodes and aproppriate salt in order to carry the chargers in the water.

Most of the industrially used hydrogen today is of fossil origin. However, a green hydrogen technology producing hydrogen 100 percent from renevable sources is quickly developing. Electrolysis is studied as an alternative for storing and transporting energy produced by wind turbines. Most of the hydrogen released in the atmosphere eventually escapes in to the space.

Small scale creation of hydrogen in this project

There are a many processes for creating hydrogen by electricity. The one used in this project is not the most efficient one nor the most durable one. We are going to break the water to hydrogen and oxygen simply by adding Glauber’s salt to the solution and observing the hydrogen produced. The system will not include any way to store the hydrogen but will include some way for leading the created hydrogen to external storage. The storage of hydrogen gas includes a risk of explosion or fire. The original idea also included an idea of storing hydrogen as bubbles in melted sugar, but this part was cut off the project as something that can be developed in the future. The use of semi-permeable membranes for isolating the electrodes was also cut off, therefore the process also runs much shorter time than it otherwise could.

At this point, the project consists of a system for breaking up the water cheaply. The system could be upscaled, but when the requirement for the amount of hydrogen increases, other processes commonly used in hydrogen produced from 100 percent renewable sources. The hydrogen production system made in this project is economically suitable for demo purposes and for distribution of the knowledge of the electrolysis process for areas and people who do not understand how the technology works. Sometimes only a very small amount of hydrogen or oxygen is required and there are no other sources available. Then manufacturing a small electrolysis system in Fab Lab might be a useful option. Also, in cases there are small electrical potentials easily available, the electrolysis equipment may be able to convert electrical potentials to marketing potential. If stored properly, it doesn’t matter how slow the hydrogen is generated, it still burns the same way.

Licensing

After considering other options, I decided to use Fab Licence in this project. The MIT licening, where anything could be done as long as I include the original copyrights was also a valid alternative.

Funding

This project is funded by me personally and by using the materials already available for me in Fab Lab. For better distribution of the process I try to use parts which are easily available in the most.

Scaling up

If the project is a success, then it is possible to iterate the idea further and continue by designing more efficiently producable low-tech kit for greenish electrolysis. At that point sponsorship might be an option. Also, because the speed of the production is not an issue when the idea is to produce hydrogen by the help of small potentials, developing a larger pool for storing the hydrogen might be a good idea.

Commercialization

At this point I see no immediate commercial options for this project. Maybe people wanting to produce very small amounts of oxygen or hydrogen are interesteed of a commercialized kit.

Future options

I found it intersting, that there are so few projects focused on controlling chemical processes in Fab Academy. Automatization of processes is something that can be done quite easily with the skills provided by Fab Academy.

I hope this project provides an example, that projects like this are possible in Fab Academy and gives courage for next Fab Academy students to consider something like this as a subject of their Final Projects.

References

Video