What is Hydrogen Recycling? Hint: It’s Making Green Hydrogen Even Greener
At SKYRE, we’re all about hydrogen and are committed to not wasting a molecule of it. Our mission is to decarbonize the world's energy system, and we’re doing that in part, by recycling hydrogen – leaving less waste and paving a smarter way to a better world.
As many know, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. But pure hydrogen, the hydrogen that can be used to create the chips in our cell phones and the metal on our cars is not as common as you might think.
To understand why recycling hydrogen is smart, you must understand the process of creating it - and grapple with the volume that is wasted on a daily basis. Take a look at some of the most asked questions we hear about recycling hydrogen and how we do it with SKYRE’s flagship product, the H2RENEW™.
What is hydrogen recycling?
Recycling hydrogen is the practice of separation and purification (and sometimes compression) of hydrogen that is mixed with other gases and contaminants after it’s been used in an industrial manufacturing process. The goal is to add value to the originally purchased hydrogen, upgrade it, and put it in a form that a customer values – in most cases sending it back to the process for reuse.
What makes the H2RENEW a good solution?
Let’s start with the truth: pure hydrogen is not cheap to make. You’ve either got to split a molecule from a hydrocarbon or you split it from water — both take energy, equipment, and money.
The merchant hydrogen market size is forecast to reach $124 billion by 2027 after growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.2% during 2022-2027. Now consider that in certain industrial processes, up to 85% of that hydrogen is wasted. This comes from hydrogen’s love of mixing with other gases, making it dirty and unusable. It gets thrown away or burned because purity of hydrogen is a big deal to most customers. Purity of hydrogen is based on the number of 9’s the hydrogen reaches. Pure hydrogen can be measured as up to five or six 9’s.
That’s where SKYRE – and the H2RENEW – come into play. SKYRE is able to recycle hydrogen at a 99.9999% purity. This means our system cuts out the need for regularly delivered and stored hydrogen. Customers use hydrogen in their industrial process, run it through the H2RENEW, and use it again. The result: recycled hydrogen with the same or better quality and lower cost than that typically being delivered by merchant hydrogen providers or produced by onsite generation technologies today.
Our hydrogen recycling solution provides a 50% cost savings compared to purchased hydrogen - saving the customer a huge amount of money.
What problems does the H2RENEW solve for customers?
There are many, not the least of which are the cost reductions H2RENEW delivers. Those are realized in a couple of ways. First, you’re no longer wasting the expensive hydrogen that you’ve paid for. There’s a reality to dealing with the smallest and lightest element on earth — so small that 4 billion atoms, laid end to end, could fit on the head of one pin. That makes it difficult and thus expensive to transport and store. So, unless its liquified or compressed hydrogen, you’re basically trying to drive a truck full of feathers. Secondly, there are safety regulations limiting the amount of hydrogen that can be stored onsite – thus potentially limiting manufacturing capacity and a business’s bottom line. With H2RENEW recycling and delivering pure hydrogen back to the process, this problem is eliminated. Lastly, with no moving parts and a first maintenance milestone of 7 years, there are virtually no maintenance costs for the H2RENEW.
What are the environmental benefits of the H2RENEW?
The largest amount of hydrogen today is derived from natural gas and produced from fossil fuels, making it both the cheapest and least renewable form of hydrogen. According to the International Energy Association, hydrogen production is responsible for emitting around 830 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. This is equivalent to the CO₂ emissions of the UK and Indonesia combined.
By providing purified hydrogen back into the industrial process, SKYRE’s H2RENEW eliminates the need for high levels of hydrogen production, lowering emissions by up to 50%. That’s something we’re excited about, because climate change is the most important issue of our time and one that we at SKYRE are driven to help solve.
