Fortescue Metals Group is investing in CSIRO's new metal membrane technology to potentially kick-start the export of renewable energy produced in Australia.
The development of the technology is at the core of the $20 million partnership, which over the next five years will see Fortescue and CSIRO working towards the establishment of an Australian hydrogen industry.
“We are at the beginning of an energy revolution and Fortescue intends to be at the forefront of this once in a generation opportunity,” Fortescue Chairman Andrew Forrest commented his firm's investment.
Indeed, hydrogen is rapidly emerging as a significant energy carrier, as was highlighted by the launch of the international Hydrogen Council at the World Economic Forum in 2017, a global initiative backed by major companies including from the energy and resources sector (see The comeback of hydrogen).
Importantly, hydrogen has also the potential to significantly boost the penetration of renewable energy in the global energy mix.
In a process called electrolysis, clean energy, such as from wind and solar, can be converted into molecular energy by splitting water into its components, oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen can then be captured and stored in tanks.
Molecular hydrogen is highly reactive, and with oxygen recombines to water in a potentially explosive fashion. Technologies such as fuel cells make it possible to control this reaction, and to recover the released energy as usable electricity or heat.
Researchers around the world are working on making the process from splitting water to storing and transporting hydrogen, and then using it as a fuel more efficient.
However, due to its low density, and its potentially explosive reaction with oxygen in the air, hydrogen gas is difficult to transport. There are attempts to build ocean-ships that are equipped to transport larger amounts of hydrogen in liquefied form, but this is likely to be complex and costly.
The solution could be ammonia, which is easily produced by combining hydrogen with nitrogen. Also, in its liquid form ammonia has a very high density of hydrogen, and can be transported via established routes.
Until recently recovering pure hydrogen from ammonia presented a significant barrier, though, but CSIRO's new technology is set to overcome this problem. It uses a special catalyst that induces ammonia to decompose to hydrogen and nitrogen, and then extracts pure hydrogen by passing the small gas through a metal membrane filter while blocking other larger gases such as nitrogen.
The efficient recovery of hydrogen from ammonia could pave the way for a hydrogen export industry in Australia, with CSIRO driving the technology development through its Hydrogen Energy Systems Future Science Platform.