From Sunlight to Hydrogen, SunHydrogen Partakes An Innovative Sustainable Tech Journey

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• ⚡From Sunlight to Hydrogen, SunHydrogen Partakes An Innovative Sustainable Tech Journey☀️

From Sunlight to Hydrogen, SunHydrogen Partakes An Innovative Sustainable Tech Journey

Hydrogen, as we know it, is the simplest and most abundant element, accounting for about 90% of the visible universe, found in the sun and most of the stars. Though this is the case, this element is extremely reactive that the father of the atomic bomb opposed the creation of a hydrogen-based weapon.

Its reactive nature means that there’s virtually no pure elemental hydrogen on Earth, and most have to be produced. Is it important to produce? If so, why?

Hydrogen, though invisible to the eye, plays a considerable role in our day-to-day lives. Hydrogen fuel cells can be used as an environmentally friendly power source for our vehicles. Hydrogen generates electricity to power and heat our homes, and it is usable for various industries, used to produce ammonia for fertilizers, for example.

Hydrogen helps tackle various critical energy challenges our world currently faces, and according to the International Energy Agency, making use of this element can lead to the decarbonization of various sectors, including long-haul transport, chemicals, and iron and steel, which happen to be sectors that heavily contribute to carbon emissions and currently still have difficulty reducing them.

A number of fuels are able to produce hydrogen, including renewables, nuclear, natural gas, coal, and oil, and at the moment, hydrogen is almost entirely being supplied by natural gas and coal. With hydrogen already being used on an industrial scale today, this poses a problem. Hydrogen production is responsible for 830 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, so wiser approaches to hydrogen production need to be found and implemented and fast.

This is where startup SunHydrogen comes in. SunHydrogen transforms solar power and sources of water into hydrogen by extracting water at its molecular level using solar panels. With its technology, SunHydrogen has essentially found a way to replace unsustainable hydrogen production.

The Sun and Water

SunHydrogen was founded in 2009 and is run by president and CEO Tim Young. Aware of the fact that nearly all hydrogen is procured through steam methane reforming, which is a process that emits massive amounts of carbon dioxide and other harmful pollutants, the company started out as HyperSolar with the goal of producing hydrogen at the lowest cost using sunlight and any water source.

Five years later, the Santa Barbara-based company succeeded in conducting artificial photosynthesis using electricity and patented its nanotechnology-based hydrogen production technology in 2019.

The company’s technology entails a process called Photosynthetically Active Heterostructures, or PAH for short. To understand this process more easily, imagine the PAH as microscopic machines. These machines have layers that conduct ‘solar electrolysis,’ the process of using electricity gained by capturing energy from sunlight to trigger a chemical reaction. This chemical reaction splits water into its building elements, which are hydrogen and oxygen. This extraction allows hydrogen to be used as a clean energy source, leaving clean oxygen as its only byproduct.

SunHydrogen dedicates its resources to developing this technology, allowing it to produce renewable hydrogen using sunlight and any source of water, which can be found practically everywhere. In theory, this would mean the company could create endless supplies of hydrogen, providing the ultimate solution to achieving clean and green practices, and this is what they are continuously trying to accomplish.

Hydrogen Solar Panels

In February 2023, SunHydrogen revealed its product, a panel containing 16 hydrogen generators that absorbs sunlight and collects the hydrogen gas produced. The company is currently looking for a way to increase the panel’s hydrogen production capabilities, all while reducing cost, one way being to upsize the area where the hydrogen is generated on the panel.

Being a form of technology that absorbs sunlight energy, the panel can only be used when the sun is shining. However, SunHydrogen is designing a prototype for a panel that could work even when the sun is out, all day, every day, 24/7. The prototype relies on renewable sources like wind or hydropower to gain electricity so it could continue to produce hydrogen.

Just last June, SunHydrogen announced that it had raised funds of $3.1 million with the support of the Federal Government of Germany’s 7th Energy Research Program. The collected funds are used for Project NanoPEC, a 3-year initiative that enables the company to rapidly work on the commercialization of its technology. One of the main objectives of this project is to bring SunHydrogen’s patented technology to a demonstration plant scale, which would allow the company to develop the necessary manufacturing technology that could automate production on a 1000-unit scale.

In 2022, SunHydrogen also worked on a prototype involving semiconductor units for similar purposes. This prototype led to SunHydrogen’s team’s discovery of how much voltage is required to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and this became the foundation of the company’s current patented technology. On July 11th, 2023, SunHydrogen announced a partnership with South-Korean electroplater COTEC to further improve and optimize the company’s semiconductor deposition technology.

The progress SunHydrogen has achieved over the years goes to show how meaningful one’s goal can be, and how focus pays off. A dream pursued by one company may lead to a great renewable energy space for everyone, and there is no telling how far we could go after that.

Meme & AI-Generated Picture

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