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Safe Hydrogen LLC originally developed its hydrogen slurry compound as a method for safely transporting hydrogen in and for vehicles. But as hydrogen vehicles, and the “hydrogen economy” that was predicted to come with them, have failed to materialize, the Lexington-based company is turning its compound to a new niche — energy storage.
The result is a hydrogen slurry that acts as a battery, capable of being charged and discharged on demand and providing the potential to make power a storable, mobile commodity. The compound is still in development, said Safe Hydrogen CEO Ken Browne, and it probably won’t be ready for demonstrations for another year. If successful, it has the potential to provide alternative energy systems such as wind, solar and ocean power the crucial storage element that such intermittent power sources have been lacking.
In recent tests, Safe Hydrogen has been able to charge and discharge the slurry 50 times, and those tests were only stopped because of time constraints, according to David Bowen, an engineer with Hatch Science Inc. in Fall River, which is working with Safe Hydrogen on some engineering.
The materials to initially create the compound are expensive, according to Browne, but once the slurry is made, the ability to recharge it can make it a cost-effective storage device, the company said. When discharged, the material can create one kilogram of hydrogen, which contains about the same amount of energy as one gallon of gasoline, for about $3.
“If you can use the slurry over and over again, the capital cost can be amortized over time, and the overall cost becomes quite low,” said Browne.
As an energy storage platform, the slurry could have the ability to provide instant power for energy systems that function on intermittent sources of power by fueling hydrogen-based generators. The idea, said Browne is to store energy in the slurry on site, at a wind or solar farm, and discharge when the wind or sun is not present.
In addition, because the slurry is stable, it can be easily transported via tanker or rail, making it possible to create energy offshore and ship it to the mainland, or even absorb energy from large wind farms in remote areas and transport to urban areas.
This kind of flexible storage and delivery has been a sticking point in the alternative energy sector for some time, and a handful of local companies are looking at other means of storing power for on-demand release. Newton’s General Compression Inc., for example, is developing a way to store energy from wind turbines using compressed air. In Tyngsborough, Beacon Power Corp. is using flywheels to help utilities store and regulate grid power to prevent blackouts.
In a report from LUX Research released last year, the firm projected growth in the energy storage market would reach 55 percent over the next five years to a value of $64 billion. Bulk energy storage for utilities, said the report, presents the largest opportunity, assuming installed wind projects adopt a storage model. If 10 percent of the installed wind power base were to adopt large-scale energy storage, according to the report, the market could be worth $50 billion.
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