Technology Firm Aims to Disrupt Hydrogen Sector

Clean hydrogen is a burgeoning sector, with game-changing potential for the climate, but it's an industry that itself is ripe for disruption. That is the view of Utility Global, a Houston-based technology firm that believes it has developed a solution that could both upend how clean hydrogen is produced and expand options for consuming it at a reasonable cost.

Utility's eXERO technology (pronounced "e-zero") offers a novel approach to producing hydrogen utilizing waste gases and heat from industrial streams to power an electrolytic reaction that separates oxygen from water molecules. The process behind the technology, which requires no external electrical input, hinges on a proprietary ceramic membrane that enables hydrogen to be split off from the steam feedstock. The process can be powered by a "flexible" array of gases — methane, renewable natural gas or untreated industrial off-gases — which flow through the system and are processed into an "enriched" stream of CO2 that can be captured and sequestered at a lower cost compared to conventional methods. (Other elements and compounds in a waste-gas stream, such as nitrogen and oxygen, pass through the system and are released into the atmosphere.)

Electrolysis Without Electricity

CEO Claus Nussgruber describes it as a "high-temperature solid-oxide electrolytic process without the use of electricity." Electrolysis does require an electrical charge to break water molecules — two hydrogen and one oxygen — into their components. In Utility's process, water, in the form of steam, is injected into one side of the specially treated ceramic membrane, with some gas on the other side. The technology leverages the innate properties of the elements within common industrial gases that, when placed in the right conditions, naturally give off a charge that allows the electrolytic reaction to occur — not unlike the classic high-school chemistry experiment that uses copper, zinc and a lemon to power a light bulb.

"These materials come into their own and get special properties at a certain temperature," Nussgruber explains. "Breaking water apart needs energy. Oxidizing something — to take a carbon monoxide and turn it into a carbon dioxide — gives off energy. So our process can be balanced by the energy given off being equal to the energy required." Maintaining the hundreds of degrees Centigrade required for the reaction to occur is critical, he says, so the system must also be wrapped in enough insulation to keep the temperature constant. The technology can reduce the cost of producing hydrogen from waste gas by 30%, according to the company.

Investor Interest

The prospect of simultaneously producing clean hydrogen inexpensively while treating raw flue gases — all while using no electricity — seems almost too good to be true. But investors are taking notice. The company recently closed a $25 million Series B round, bringing in big name investors like oil and refining giant Saudi Aramco, technology player Samsung and construction-materials specialist Saint-Gobain. "It is not very often that we find a company with the potential to disrupt an entire industry and positively impact the world at the same time," Cory Steffek, partner at lead investor Ara Partners, a private equity firm focused on industrial decarbonization, said in a statement.

At this stage, Utility is targeting hard-to-decarbonize end-users of hydrogen such as steelworks, refineries and petrochemical plants. The idea is to install modules at existing plants, produce hydrogen while treating waste gases, and then use that steady flow of clean hydrogen for operations onsite. The company says a steelmaker, for example, can cut carbon emissions by 25% with the technology, even before adding on any carbon-capture equipment, although capture costs on the back end would be "significantly lower" since the processed CO2 would be "capture ready."

The footprint of the technology is also considerably smaller than that of a conventional electrolyzer because it does not require any of the equipment needed to connect the plant to an electrical grid — "all the electrolysis benefits but it doesn't have the impediments of the power supply," Nussgruber tells Energy Intelligence.

Customer Buy-In

Utility has an industrial pilot plant up and running at its global headquarters in Houston's Energy Corridor west of the city. The company says it is currently in "multiple" partnership discussions for field-demonstration programs.

Nussgruber says the technology's first deployment could be announced by the second or third quarter of 2023. "We're not just an interest at a university. Real companies are taking our calls, and we're having real negotiations for contracts right now," he says. "These are customers who have a real need for green, low-carbon hydrogen. They have real decarbonization pressures. But these are also visionary customers who want to lead in the energy transition, and therefore are looking for a technology that is sustainable, affordable and near term to achieving those goals."

He says a typical response from a prospective customer is, "Oh, wow, we never thought of doing it this way … because traditional process engineering would not have come up with the electrochemical piece of it, and classic electrochemical engineers would not have come up with the process piece of it." He adds: "It's at the intersection of process engineering and electrochemical engineering, which required one of these, sort of, ‘thinking beyond the box’ kind of moments. And that is what happened here."