S.L. firm bridles hydrogen

A Salt Lake-based company may someday be able to say it played a huge part in developing a hydrogen-based energy alternative.

Ceramatec Inc. cells and plates, invented for use by NASA, are a key ingredient for researchers studying ways to produce hydrogen in large amounts using electrolysis employing high-temperature steam from a next-generation nuclear reactor system. It's a process that someday could result in "dirty" crude oil being used for vehicle fuel, or ultimately hydrogen for fuel cells to motor cars down the road.

"Clearly, hydrogen production by high-temperature electrolysis can have wide-reaching impacts on energy and the environment, and it will require demonstrating the technology at a much larger scale than what we've currently done," said Joseph Hartvigsen, leading the project work at Ceramatec.

A cell unit "stack," tiny enough to be held in one's hand, has demonstrated the process on a small scale, but the Ceramatec-led research team will scale high-temperature electrolysis cells to an industrial-size device. Ceramatec's chief executive officer, Ashok Joshi, said the cell size to be developed over the next three years will be 100 times larger.

A new high-temperature reactor that could produce both electricity and heat for hydrogen production could be operating in a little more than a decade at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

"The Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy Science and Technology wants to demonstrate commercial-scale hydrogen production both using the heat and electricity from a nuclear energy system by 2017 — just 12 years from now," said Michael Anderson, the hydrogen project lead at the U.S. Department of Energy.

"The particular technology being recognized here today is one that DOE is evaluating for the ultimate demonstration of commercial-scale, high-temperature electrolysis for the production of hydrogen. . . . So, this important milestone today that we're talking about, the hydrogen production . . . is a significant step on the trail to this commercial demonstration. This proves the function and effectiveness of the technology at the smaller scale."

Using electric energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen has been around for decades, but cost has been a big bugaboo, leaving it on the back burner when it comes to fuel production. But high-temperature electrolysis likely would cut the amount of electric power needed in the process by replacing some of the electricity with heat energy, such as high-temperature steam from a next-generation nuclear reactor.