The challenge of hydrogen storage has become a major impediment in the way the fuel can grow. Without better links between supply and demand, the low-carbon fuel will struggle to take off.

Given time and resources, a scientist can overcome many challenges.

So it is with H2MOF, a privately funded startup focused on hydrogen storage.

Crazy difficult

“It’s clean, and it’s abundant, but unfortunately, it’s also crazy difficult to store because it’s also the lightest element in the universe. And that’s why, the existing technologies are struggling,” H2MOF’s vice president for business development Magnus Bach said.

Despite hydrogen’s “immense potential”, it has not taken off “first and foremost because of the challenges on the storage and transportation side”.

There are low carbon technologies to produce it, he continued, and utilisation is progressing well.

There are two main ways of storing and transporting hydrogen: under high pressure or as a cryogenic liquid.

“They have certain use cases but they consume a humungous amount of energy and there’s a lot of losses.”

Hydrogen losses and energy consumption are significant in these processes. Liquefying hydrogen requires about 30-40% of its energy content. Using hydrogen in domestic conditions is daunting due to safety concerns.

The other option for transporting hydrogen is to transform it into ammonia, but this poses challenges around consumption.

Bonding

Bach noted that these problems are well known and innovation is focused on solving them, with most solutions focusing on metal hydrides. Developers of metal hydrides include GKN Hydrogen and GRZ Technologies.

This technology is low pressure and works at ambient pressures, but it has drawbacks. “It’s really heavy”, the official said, and “it relies on strong bonding. It takes a lot of energy to discharge the hydrogen from the metal hydrides.”

H2MOF’s plan addresses these problems, he continued. The company is working on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs).

These are made of repeating “cage-like building blocks”, with pores. The hydrogen molecules fill the voids and attach to the surface via adsorption. Increasing the temperature of the MOF slightly releases the hydrogen.

“It doesn’t require a lot of energy to discharge because it’s weak bonded,” Bach said.

From the outside, the MOF looks like powder he said. “You have to zoom in to the nanoscale to see these voids or cavities. In terms of the value chain, it’s no different than, for instance, a high-pressure storage tank. You don’t need a compressor at the point of charging,” he said, as this type of storage can take hydrogen direct from the electrolyser.

Making it up

“We do think we have a little bit of an edge, especially towards physical-based technologies, but actually also towards metal hydrides. But there’s room for everybody, and not all technologies will be ideal for all applications.”

The executive was upbeat about manufacturing MOF products for storage. He said existing processes would need to be scaled up, but BASF and other players have shown it is possible.

The use case determines the manufacturing. Building a large storage tank poses different challenges than a car fuel tank.

“This is actually a really good upside [to MOFs] compared to, for instance, battery production. They rely on a lot of rare earth metals and pricing of those is quite volatile, which is a business risk.”

Manufacturing MOFs relies on “standard raw materials like copper and nickel or aluminium”, he said. These materials are “not very difficult to get, nor is [the process] very expensive from a manufacturing and scaling perspective”.

The people

For companies like H2MOF, the crucial part of innovation is the people driving it. There are three co-founders.

Professor Fraser Stoddart won the Nobel prize in 2016 for his work on the “design and synthesis of molecular machines”. His work highlighted the role of the mechanical bond in molecular compounds.

Professor Omar Yaghi pioneered reticular chemistry.

The CEO is Samer Taha, the executive chairman of Revonence Technologies, H2MOF’s private equity backer.

Bach noted that while the technology was new, “the scientific legacies that we’re building on is extremely strong”.

With Yaghi pioneering MOF research and Stoddart’s artificial molecular machinery, H2MOF has a “good starting point”, Bach continued. “You take those two competencies and put them together with one mission.”

Out of stealth

The next step is to move from designing the materials to building industrial prototypes. “We would like to advance and test in the field together with relevant technology partners. This is one of the reasons why we came out of stealth.”

Bach was talking from Dubai. H2MOF, based in California, sees global opportunities in the hydrogen economy.

“Although we are still pre-commercial, I’ve had talks with a lot of companies across the value chain from all corners of the world, from Australia and New Zealand to China and Korea and Japan, US for sure, Europe, Germany, UK, France and so on. It is a global phenomenon.”

The company hopes to increase the speed of hydrogen development by solving the storage problem.

Revonence is not only betting on H2MOF. It is also backing another company, Atoco, with Professor Yaghi. Atoco aims to use customised adsorbent materials to capture CO2 and harvest water.

Bach said H2MOF was not a typical start up in that it was well funded and had a “reasonable financial runway”.

Scaling up is always the challenge for innovation. But Bach – and H2MOF – are right that hydrogen storage and transportation is a major constraint. If the company can prove out its technology and secure a piece of the puzzle, its future looks bright.

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