Inside a Green Hydrogen Pilot Plant

We got a look inside Verdagy's pilot plant, where the company is testing its multimillion-dollar electrolyzer designed to turn renewable energy like wind and solar into hydrogen.

Verdagy CEO Marty Neese tells us that hydrogen is "the Swiss Army knife of molecules." It can be used as a fuel source that doesn't produce greenhouse gases; as a way to store excess renewable energy for later use, like a battery; and as a part of the process of making ammonia for agricultural applications like fertilizer.

Hydrogen is already in use in all the above ways, but the problem is that it isn't always green. "Gray hydrogen," as Neese calls it, is hydrogen made with the fossil fuel methane. Neese says Verdagy's technology is designed to bring down the cost of "green hydrogen," or hydrogen produced with water and electricity generated from renewable sources, to "decarbonize the use of hydrogen."

The process that Verdagy's technology facilitates is called alkaline water electrolysis. An electrolyte solution, in this case potassium hydroxide (KOH), is pumped through an electrolyzer, which adds electricity to the mix, splitting the water molecules into hydrogen on the negatively charged (cathode) side and oxygen on the positively charged (anode) side.

The KOH isn't consumed, so it gets mixed with new water, to replace what was split, and pumped back into the electrolyzer to continue the process. Verdagy CTO Tom McWaid says the electrolyte's role is simply to increase the conductivity of the water and make the process more energy efficient.

This process takes place within Verdagy's "smart cells," which work together to make up one of the electrolyzers. Each cell can be monitored in real time, turned up or down to respond to fluctuating energy costs, and can be swapped out or serviced when needed. Multiple electrolyzers can be put together to increase the output of a green hydrogen plant.

All together, Neese says, it's "millions of dollars for an electrolyzer," but the estimated "tens of thousands of gallons of diesel equivalent produced per day" of hydrogen will make green hydrogen competitive in cost with fossil fuels globally by 2030.

To see the green hydrogen machines in action, check out the video in this article.