INTERVIEW: HFI close to $2/kg hydrogen production using proprietary wind technology

Hydrogen Future Industries is closing in on $2/kg green hydrogen production, leveraging its proprietary wind power technology, HFI Energy Systems CEO Tim Blake told S&P Global Commodity Insights in an interview March 10.

Blake, who joined the company having worked in wind turbine efficiency, said HFI's demonstration-scale production was already cheaper than renewable hydrogen production costs of around $4/kg-$6/kg currently achievable elsewhere.

The company has built a first prototype in Montana, US, with a view to confirming wind tunnel testing results in the field.

"Up to now it has been wind tunnel tested, and has shown huge gains in efficiency over a normal wind turbine", Blake said.

"We'll know fairly quickly" if we can achieve the $2/kg production cost figure, he said. "And then it will be achievable as soon as the turbines go up. Because the rest of our system is based on current efficiencies for electrolyzers as they sit."

Hydrogen production costs via grid-based proton exchange membrane electrolysis ranged from below $3/kg in the US Gulf Coast to over $10/kg in Europe in February, according to the Platts Hydrogen Price Wall, part of S&P Global.

HFI's hydrogen production is based on existing electrolyzer technology, with the gains made on the power generation side, through its novel wind turbine design offering cheaper, more efficient power input, Blake said.

Efficiency gains

The company said it can achieve up to a 50% reduction in the cost of electricity generation compared with open rotor wind turbines.

"We've been developing a completely new type of wind turbine," Blake said, not its patented ducted system was more efficient than conventional designs. "It works off a hydraulic system, rather than using a gearbox and generator per turbine. They work together as a collective."

The system had been optimized for hydrogen production, he added.

The telescopic turbines could be configured in wind farm array at different heights, reducing wake issues from one turbine to the next.

By contrast, a conventional turbine with a gear box had to be configured to an optimal speed, above which it did not produce any more energy, Blake said.

A ducted turbine accelerated air through the turbine, increasing the speed to around 2.5 times, thereby enabling operations at low wind speeds, he said.

"We've spent a lot of time trying to solve the issues of ducted turbines, and we believe we've done it," Blake said. "It means they work in far lower wind speeds, as well as higher wind speeds."

The turbines had a further advantage during maintenance, allowing for an individual turbine to be lowered on its telescopic tower for work without interrupting operations across the rest of the wind farm.

Being light-weight and smaller scale, they were also a good option for using in deep offshore waters on floating platforms, Blake said, citing opportunities in California and Japan.

A typical "large" turbine for HFI was 15 meters-20 meters in diameter, Blake said, in contrast to more standard models in the range of 150 meters. A 25 meter diameter HFI turbine would have production capacity of around 1 MW, he said.

Tests have shown the system has a 64% capacity factor, Blake added.

Electrolyzer development

Meanwhile, HFI is also developing its own electrolyzer technology, moving away from rare-earth based systems such as proton exchange membranes, which use platinum-group metals such as iridium.

"The aim is non-rare earth with greater efficiency than PEM, at a fraction of the cost," Blake said.

Blake pointed to limited supplies of iridium causing a bottleneck for PEM electrolysis.

If all the iridium mined globally between now and 2030 went to the electrolysis sector, he estimated PEM technology could contribute around 90 GW of hydrogen production capacity – half of the global 180 GW targeted by then.

"However, in reality, because of the demands for iridium, you would likely achieve less than 10% of the global demand," he said. "This really underlines the critical need for efficient non-rare earth electrolyzers like ours."

HFI is eyeing first commercial operations for its systems in 2024, and has some customers lined up, although Blake was tight-lipped on details.

He did, however, point to opportunities for remote power generation in the mining sector.