Net zero for energy and carbon is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and hydrogen is also a resource that human beings depend on for a living. However, it is not readily available and needs to be "extracted" first. But about 95% of the world's hydrogen fuel comes from fossil fuels; ammonia is a precursor to nitrogen fertilizers in many forms, and the hydrogen needed to produce ammonia has traditionally been produced by reacting fossil fuels such as natural gas (mainly methane) with steam or from cracked oil fractions obtained in. These are energy-intensive processes with huge CO2 emissions. Therefore, there is a desire to obtain decarbonized, renewable, sustainable hydrogen.
To explain the various production processes of hydrogen, industry often uses colors to describe hydrogen: black or brown hydrogen is made from coal; grey hydrogen is made from natural gas; blue hydrogen when most of the carbon dioxide released is captured; green hydrogen Hydrogen is made through electrolysis, a process that uses renewable energy sources such as solar or wind power to split water into oxygen and hydrogen.
Today, less than 1% of the world's hydrogen is green hydrogen due to the high cost and lack of commercial readiness of the technology.
HydGene Renewables, a spin-off from Macquarie University in Australia, is developing high-purity hydrogen solutions that can be produced on-farm from renewable plant feedstocks in a zero-carbon process, addressing the high transport and storage costs long associated with hydrogen .
The company spun off from the university in 2020 and is now headquartered at King's College, Parramatta, Sydney, with a team of eight scientists, including Associate Professor Louise Brown, CEO and co-founder of HydGene Renewables, Holds a PhD in Biophysics and has over 15 years of experience in the bioengineering and characterization of complex protein systems.
Under the direction of another co-founder, Professor Robert Willows, the technology was first developed by Macquarie University undergraduates who successfully demonstrated that bacteria could be reengineered to produce hydrogen, and entered an international genetic engineering design competition. "The student team developed a bacterial pathway to produce biohydrogen from sugar, which not only won best energy project at that year's international genetic engineering design competition, but also provided an idea that we thought had enormous potential," Brown said
. Using synthetic biology, an Australian company has designed a "next-generation biocatalyst" using algal DNA to recode bacterial genes. This biocatalyst is extremely stable and resistant to compounds that are often toxic to microorganisms, and can produce carbon at unprecedented rates and yields from renewable plant feedstocks such as straw stubble, hay, sugarcane, wood chips and food waste and high-purity hydrogen.
It is the sugar content of the above raw materials that is directly used in the synthetic biology process. The company experimented with wheat and barley straw and found that they were much better than sorghum straw. In addition, even dried or contaminated grain straw may be used as raw material. The team estimates that a medium-sized grain farm would have enough straw to produce the hydrogen needed for all their energy and fertilizer needs. " On the
other hand, the main challenge in building renewable hydrogen is related to storage and the need to transport the hydrogen to where it is used. Storage costs can be as high as $0.3/kg. Transportation costs also add significantly to the hydrogen cost, with road transport estimated at 0.23 per km transported USD/kg. The cost of these two aspects has exceeded 90% of the initial cost. Moreover, the energy consumption of storage and transportation alone is close to 80% of the hydrogen it carries.
So the company's second feature - producing hydrogen only when and where it's needed - is also important. The rate and amount of hydrogen production is regulated by an automated and feedback-controlled process. Not only does it eliminate any unnecessary and dangerous accumulation of hydrogen, but also overcomes the cost of storing hydrogen, the biocatalyst is stored in modular elements with a small footprint, does not compete with arable land, and can be replaced if it fails. Modular elements can be large or small to suit the scale of hydrogen demand across industries, including the agricultural sector (for heating, electricity, transport) and chemical manufacturing (for ammonia production). Hydrogen can be produced 24/7 without the need for light or wind energy. This safe solution fills the renewable energy gap and provides value-added opportunities for agricultural and food waste. Hydrogen produced in this way can reach a competitive price of $2 to $3 per kilogram.
This technology can benefit biomass waste producers, such as agriculture, forestry, paper and pulp, and the food industry; hydrogen energy-related businesses: the technology can be directly combined with hydrogen fuel cell technology to generate electricity on-site and on-demand; ammonia production: The technology can also be combined with emerging low temperature and low pressure membrane ammonia production methods to produce fertilizers on-farm.
The company is also now working on new ways to produce ammonia using synthetic biology methods. In the long term, there will be many large markets for renewable hydrogen; but in the short term, renewable fertilizers are a top priority and represent a viable, early-stage, large market opportunity.
Future research will continue to optimize engineered bacteria using synthetic biology tools, including optimizing strains, processes, scale, and will also evaluate commercialization potential and opportunities for direct on-farm use of clean hydrogen to generate electricity, and hopefully find investments to understand other feedstock markets and the size of the supply chain.
.jpeg)