Hgen draws on Tesla and SpaceX experience to lower hydrogen costs

Hydrogen could also be touted because the fuel of the longer term that’s poised to decarbonize shipping and industry, but 90 million metric tons now utilized in every part from fertilizer production to chemical production, 96% comes directly from natural gas, oil, or coal. For example, one of the crucial common methods is steam methane reforming, which essentially cooks the methane in order that the hydrogen comes off, releasing carbon dioxide in the method.

This can hardly be called a climate-friendly future.

That means there’s loads of room for corporations to try to bring down the value of hydrogen production. “There’s over $100 billion being spent on hydrogen for industrial applications right now,” said Molly Yang, co-founder and CEO Hgen.

Yang and her co-founder Colin Ho founded Hgen three years ago after stints at Tesla and SpaceX. Their goal was to modularly create electrolyzers, chemical assemblies that may produce green hydrogen by splitting water atoms into hydrogen and oxygen. Electrolysis isn’t squeaky clean—it still requires electricity, which is currently generated from a mixture of renewables and fossil fuels—but because the grid gets cleaner, hydrogen production through electrolysis can be getting cleaner.

That vision earned them a $2 million seed round in 2022 led by Founders Fund and induction into this yr’s Breakthrough Energy Fellows cohort. Now, Hgen is back with one other $5 million funding round from Seven Seven Six with participation from Fontinalis Partners and Founders Fund, the corporate told TechCrunch exclusively.

Part of Hgen’s initial pitch was that we’ve all of the electrolyzer technology we want today, nevertheless it’s not optimized enough. “We’re not a materials R&D company,” Yang told TechCrunch. Instead, the team focused on optimizing the whole gadget, from the electrolyzer electrodes to the tangle of pipes and pumps that support them.

Hgen uses alkaline electrolyzers, an old and proven technology that typically trades a few of the efficiency gains of newer approaches for lower costs. But Yang says Hgen has found a way to make the electrolyzer 20 times smaller, which cuts material and manufacturing costs. “Even with the first designs, we’re coming out with much lower costs,” she said.

In an electrolyzer, the magic happens on the interface between the electrode and the liquid. The electrodes carry current into the liquid and facilitate a chemical response that breaks the bonds between hydrogen and oxygen. When this happens, bubbles of hydrogen gas on one side of the electrolyzer and oxygen gas on the opposite side form on the electrodes and eventually leak to the surface.

But those bubbles also tend to linger an excessive amount of. “That blocks the reactivity of the electrodes and the ability to create new hydrogen,” Yang said. So Hgen modified the electrode design to encourage the hydrogen and oxygen bubbles to drain away more quickly. That means Hgen’s stack of electrolyzers could be smaller and produce the identical amount of hydrogen. The smaller stack uses less material and takes up less space, which further reduces costs. “Our cell design essentially enables this virtuous cycle,” she said.

Yang said Hgen intends to package the entire thing right into a 40-foot shipping container that could be delivered to the positioning and connected with minimal work — “just water and electricity,” she said.

The startup is initially targeting corporations that currently receive hydrogen in liquefied form, which Yang said can cost well over $10 per kilogram. “Being able to avoid all that liquefaction, all that trucking, is just a more attractive price proposition for them,” she said. “And also a more stable, secure supply for them.”