Electrolyzer Cuts Hydrogen Costs 93-Percent

October 25, 2010 | By Hydro Kevin Kantola | Filed in: Hydrogen Fuel Production.

RE Hydrogen Ltd of Great Britain has received an award of $39,000 USD from the Technology Strategy Board, UK to scale up their electrolyzer into a commercial unit that can supply hydrogen to a fuel cell vehicle. The current electrolyzer prototype is 13-percent more efficient and costs 93-percent less than other comparable electrolyzers on the market.

The RE Hydrogen (REH) electrolyzer will be a 5kW unit that will be able to produce 2.3 kg of hydrogen gas per day which would be suitable for a home fueling station. REH can reduce costs for a couple of different reasons.

The first reason according to REH is, “REH’s electrolysers can potentially be a disruptive technology in the present hydrogen production and supply industry due to its low cost. REH adopts a novel approach to reduce the number of parts in the stack of the electrolyser. REH has also developed a new method of sealing the stack. It has demonstrated a novel manufacturing method for low cost production, even for small volume manufacturing.”

The second reason is that the REH electrolyzer does use an expensive fuel cell for the process. According to The Engineer, “RE’s device is also designed to prevent the potassium hydroxide (KOH) used as an electrolyte from leaking. The KOH is much cheaper than alternative technology such as proton exchange membranes, which require costly platinum electrodes.”

Does this sound familiar? In the past I’ve talked at length about hydrogen gas savers many of which use electrolysis of water and KOH as the electrolyte to create either hydrogen or HHO gas onboard and on demand inside a vehicle. While this technology inside a vehicle for creating supplemental fuel is controversial, the technology for electrolysis created outside the vehicle is not.

REH has stated that they have already secured customers for their new commercial technology.


3 comments on “Electrolyzer Cuts Hydrogen Costs 93-Percent

  1. very nice development friend, which bring hydrogen into main stream fuel for many resources, which reduce the emissions as well meets the demand of world population.

  2. As far as the electrolyser cutting down the cost of making hydrogen,its still not fast enough to be of any real value.Alternate Energy Conversions Inc. has recently pattend a way of producing instant hydrogen on demand that can make hydrogen at pressures in excess of 300,000psi and over 6,000deg.This method of creating hydrogen is the only efficient and echinomicaly way of getting hydrogen in huge ammounts.