Public Funding for Hydrostar Europe Ltd

Green hydrogen has the potential to replace large quantities of natural gas demands in "hard to abate" sectors like industrial heat and transport, however it currently faces certain barriers to widespread adoption. One of these is the requirement for highly purified water, with current electrolysers requiring water which has gone through reverse osmosis, incurring high energy demands and creating large amounts of wastewater. To address this, HydroStar and Wales and West Utilities (WWU) are working together on an Ofgem SIF project focussed on low cost, high resiliency hydrogen production using water that is less pure (tap/rain/effluent water etc). This reduces the barrier of water availability and quality for hydrogen production, enabling a more distributed approach to generation including onsite generation from renewables. Electrolysis can also perform electrocoagulation and flotation, which can clump microplastics/heavy metals/other pollutants together and bring them to the water surface to aid in their removal. HydroStar believe this will clean the water enough to produce hydrogen from. Therefore this project targets contaminated or highly polluted water to produce hydrogen, which is complementary but very different from just using impure water. This enables onsite hydrogen production for businesses with high natural gas demands who wish to reduce their carbon footprint without the need for extensive water infrastructure, whilst reducing environmental damage or wastewater treatment costs. The specific wastewater being targeted is industrial manufacturing process wastewater containing elevated levels of contaminants (heavy metals/fibres) which are toxic to the environment. This project in particular will focus on microplastics, which are not yet regulated but are becoming a large issue within human health, being linked to hormonal imbalances and other illnesses, whilst causing fast passivation of electrodes if not removed prior to electrolysis. This project will conduct engineering design and investigation studies to develop hardware to achieve both electrocoagulation of contaminated water and electrolysis of the remaining water post pollutant removal, and then perform small-scale testing for proof-of-concept at 2kW scale. To achieve this, HydroStar and WWU are collaborating with Cardiff University. This pairs the onsite operational and gas handling experience of WWU and the technology development knowledge of HydroStar with the scientific optimisation of Cardiff. The project will result in the development of a decisive new technology which has applications in many different industrial settings which have high gas demands and wastewater produced who wish to reduce their carbon footprint whilst adopting more sustainable processes within their businesses.

In the transition to low carbon shipping, multiple low carbon fuels are currently being investigated. It is likely that in the future different fuel types will be used by ships depending on their operational requirements, such as voyage duration or cargo being carried. This poses a difficulty for port operators in the development of infrastructure which can supply multiple different fuel types to ships, representing significant investments for infrastructure which is often very case specific. Two technologies currently being developed extensively are electric and hydrogen vessels, with electric focussing on short 'green corridor' trips, and hydrogen for supplying longer duration trips. Electrical grid connections are currently very difficult to develop due to National Grid constraints, which poses a difficulty not only for electric vessel charging. Within this project, the collaboration team of HydroStar, Waterwhelm and London South Bank University will develop an innovative infrastructure system which can deliver both electrical and hydrogen vessel fast charging/refuelling in a hybrid system using off grid renewable energy and onsite wastewater. This enables ports to develop their low carbon infrastructure to supply both fuel types from a holistic standpoint. Delivery of both fuel types is achieved through a system of metal hydride hydrogen storage vessels in combination with a fuel-cell and battery system. The electricity generated can either be used directly in electrical charging and battery storage, or alternatively in hydrogen generation and storage. Hydrogen can be released quickly either for fast refuelling or fast generation of electricity through the fuel-cell. Generation of hydrogen will be facilitated through the purification and treatment of wastewater onsite, using waste heat from the metal hydride and electrolyser systems to power the treatment process and remove the reliance on water main infrastructure.

HydroStar is an innovative and disruptive company focussed on Green Hydrogen hardware development and optimisation which can be easily manufactured and scaled. Last year the company won a Smart Grant to develop metal hydride storage systems to store Green Hydrogen produced from renewable solar energy, partnering with London South Bank University. This has been a successful partnership, investigating the benefits of different metal hydride materials and developing demonstration units to prove the concept of storing Green Hydrogen from renewables in metal hydrides. This project will leverage the knowledge gained and the proven technology from the Smart Grant project to develop a disruptive the hydrogen supply chain solution targeting hydrogen refuelling stations (HRSs), which reduces overall energy consumption of the hydrogen compression, storage and transportation supply chain from 35.5% to 5.5% of hydrogen embodied energy. This will be achieved using an innovative multiple stage process of metal hydride 'pairs', enabling the connection of renewable generation to the end user. Each pair of metal hydrides will function as both a hydrogen storage mechanism and continuous hydrogen delivery system, allowing the system to react to variable demands and spikes in requirements.

**VISION-AND-OPPORTUNITY** In UK 31.5% of all Greenhouse-Gas-Emissions are produced by road transport: "HGVs account for 18%(20 MtCO2e) and buses/coaches 3%(3 MtCO2e)"---25/03/2021---BEIS-National-Statistics. Currently _"there are 85,000 buses and 605,000 trucks on the UK's roads (average age 10-years), 98.8%diesel "_ and in the EU_"_ _there are 6.6M-trucks, average-age 12.4-years and 98.3%diesel."_ 'ACEA-The-European-Automobile-Manufacturers-Organisation-2021-Report'. The UK-target of net-zero by 2030 is clearly defined by the UK Government, supporting the need to substantially reduce emissions from road transport. This reduction can be achieved through replacing them with either Electric (EVs) or Hydrogen-Fuel-Cell-EVs (HFCEVs). Unlike private cars, HGVs and buses generally drive longer distances, require fast-refuelling, and the weight to fuel-source ratio is lower, all of which favour HFCVs over EVs as the preferred, if not only option, for these 2 vehicle groups. To service this need a significant economically viable infrastructure of Hydrogen-Refuelling-Stations (HRSs) needs to be built in UK by 2030\. "In UK there are 8,835 and in EU 136,000 Service Stations"---Statista-12/2021\. Over time a large proportion of these will have to convert to Hydrogen/Electric supply rather than diesel/petrol (currently 11 HRSs in UK). Our opportunity is further cemented by Element-2's plans, recently raising funds to provide over 2,000 pumps by 2030, serving the UK's heavy goods and municipal fleets, and whom we have entered into an agreement with, offering guaranteed revenue.---See-Appendix-Q4-Element2-LOC. HydroStar's target market/partner! The opportunity for our solution derives from the current process of hydrogen-supply and fuelling of a vehicle known as the 'well-to-tank' routine. The existing process is economically/emission inefficient, on average consuming 35.5% value per tanker-load of Hydrogen---ScienceDirect-osti.gov/servlets/purl/1580696-July2019---calculated from: 1. Production off-site by electrolysis/alternative 2. Compression 3. Delivery logistics 4. Stored/compressed at HRS 5. Decompressed 6. Pumped into the vehicle Pointing to an essential need for an alternative low-cost, higher-efficiency 'well-to-tank' hydrogen production process/solution. **OBJECTIVES** To produce locally, 99.999% pure, high-pressure-hydrogen using, renewable-electricity, low-cost-electrolysers, and innovative hydrogen-storage/compression-cycles (HyPro), not only saving energy, but also reducing traffic-congestion through no/minimal logistics, improving economics, subsequently lowering-air-pollution. **FOCUS-&-INNOVATION** The project will build on previous research-and-development (LSBU) of decarbonised hydrogen-storage and high-pressure production, creating an advanced-working-product. Instead of using huge-pressure-tanks and energy intensive-electric-compressors, innovative thermal-driven (using renewables), compact Metal-Hydride-Reactors (storage tubes filled with low-cost Metal-Hydride-alloys absorbing the hydrogen) will be used to store/purify/compress and decompress the gas, improving safety-and-economics. **BENEFITS** 20% improvement on efficiency is expected using our HyPro-Solution, because of a significant reduction in costs by eliminating several-stages of the current well-to-tank routine:-Packaging off-site/Logistics hydrogen-plant to HRS/Electric-compression/decompression at the HRS.