Submission Number: 289
Submission ID: 5731
Submission UUID: b0cf133c-b552-4c2b-af2a-3e24de1f033c

Created: Mon, 09/18/2023 - 12:40
Completed: Mon, 09/18/2023 - 12:43
Changed: Tue, 09/19/2023 - 15:34

Remote IP address: 174.83.0.79
Submitted by: Anonymous
Language: English

Is draft: No

Flagged: Yes
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Submitted Comment
Pinakin Patel
T2M Global, LLC
Response to SB 1075 Workshop - Diversity of Feedstocks for Green Electrolytic Hydrogen Including Wasted Resources

The T2M Global team has a CEC project (EPC-19-044) to develop green electrolytic Hydrogen technology using an Advanced Electrolytic System (AES). T2M’s Advisory Board for AES technology includes California stakeholders for green electrolytic H2 produced from wasted resources. These stakeholders include West Biofuels, PG&E, SoCalGas, PowerTap Hydrogen, Republic Services, Longitude 122 West, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, Customized Energy Solutions, Berokoff Energy Solutions, Hawaii gas, Quadrogen Power Systems, US DOE and DOD.

To fully implement the directives of SB 1075, we recommend:

  • We encourage CARB and CEC to develop and validate innovative pathways for green electrolytic H2 using currently wasted resources – including solid, liquid or gaseous sources.  
    1. Give higher priority for funding to cross cutting technologies that provide solutions across multiple economic sectors. For example, feedstock supply from agriculture, forestry, and municipal solid wastes.
    2. On the user side, emphasize multi-use applications to minimize risks associated with new H2 technology. This MUST include H2 for grid support, energy storage, light and heavy-duty vehicles, EV charging, green chemical manufacturing, and refining.

Waste biomass pathways for H2 have multiple cross-sector benefits:

  • Converting wasted resources to higher value (H2, clean electricity).
  • Reduced risk of forest fires and enhanced safety.
  • Reduced loads on landfills by diverting waste biomass to higher value products.
  • Eliminating methane emissions associated with waste biomass in landfills.
  • Grid-support benefits – H2 from excess electricity, and on demand electricity for EV charging.
  • Decarbonization benefits: co-production of RNG and H2 from waste biomass is a win-win solution to pollution while creating economic value for CA.

Refer to the work done under CEC contract number EPC-19-044 which has established the feasibility of electrolytic H2 using a variety of dilute/waste streams. In CA for 100 million tons of waste biomass per year, at 5% yield to H2, this translates to a potential 5 million tons of H2 per year. This is over 250% of the current H2 production capacity in CA.

Conventional pathways use water electrolysis.

  • It is extremely energy intensive to separate H2 (>50 MWh green electricity/ton H2).
  • Water electrolysis also takes up to 20 tons of water per ton of H2.
  • For 5 million tons of H2 per year, this would require 100 million tons of water. A serious demand for the water constrained CA economy.

Alternate innovative H2 carriers to water offer dramatically lower cost H2.
Pathways for green electrolytic  H2 are included in the attached diagram.

  • These green electrolytic H2 carriers are based on currently wasted resources.
  • It includes dilute/waste streams of H2, biogas derived syngas, fuel cell and reformer tail gases, biomass gasifiers (including air blown, oxygen blown, and pyrolysis reactors).
  • These carriers can reduce the electricity consumption by 80% compared to conventional water electrolysis.
  • Some of these pathways offer multiple benefits to achieve CA mandates. In addition to co-production of H2, they offer unique benefits that include RNG for decarbonization of natural gas pipelines and CO2 capture for reuse.