OKC Baker Hughes to get federal funding for hydrogen research project

Baker Hughes in Oklahoma City and its research into hydrogen technology that converts waste to clean energy has been named one of six projects to receive approximately $9.3 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management announced the federal funding to develop cutting-edge technology solutions to make clean hydrogen more available and affordable as a fuel for electricity generation, industrial decarbonization and transportation.

The projects will focus on advancing hydrogen systems that convert varied waste feedstock materials into clean energy with superior environmental performance to help achieve the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic decarbonization goals.

The Baker Hughes project will focus on a demonstration of an integrated, grid-flexible, hydrogen-blended turbine system. The company plans to develop technology to integrate several  commercial state-of-the-art technologies to demonstrate a grid-flexible hydrogen-blended natural gas turbine system with innovative point source carbon capture at the lab-scale.

The objectives of the project are to validate digital twin architecture for blue hydrogen with carbon capture from natural gas turbines, with variable renewable energy loads as input, and to demonstrate lab-scale operation of the proposed digital twin while achieving the Department of Energy target of a 95% carbon dioxide capture rate.

The Department of Energy will fund $691,457 for the Baker-Hughes project while non-DOE funding will total $196,250, making for a total of $887,707 in costs.

“More than 95% of the hydrogen produced in the United States comes from natural gas without the capture and geologic storage of carbon dioxide,” said Brad Crabtree, Assistant Secretary of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. “By investing in projects that advance the use of waste feedstocks and integrating hydrogen-based systems with carbon capture, we are helping reduce the carbon footprint and costs to produce clean hydrogen.”

The other projects incclude:

• GTI Energy (Des Plaines, Illinois) will demonstrate a gasifier feed control system that produces clean hydrogen from biomass and waste feedstocks.
• Lehigh University (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) will demonstrate a system that produces clean hydrogen from biomass, waste plastics, and legacy coal waste feedstocks.
• Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, New Jersey) will develop a wireless artificial intelligence-powered sensor system to enhance the competitiveness of gasification-based systems utilizing challenging mixed solid feedstocks to produce hydrogen.
• The University of Connecticut (Storrs, Connecticut) will develop a new class of sensors intended to improve the efficiency of solid waste and biomass feedstock-based gasifiers for hydrogen production.
• Electric Power Research Institute (Palo Alto, California) will develop a model to assess the net-zero capability and performance of new and existing gas turbine combined cycle plants when operated with hydrogen fuel blending and carbon capture.

Since January 2021, FECM has committed an estimated $138 million in projects that explore new, clean methods to produce hydrogen and to improve the performance of hydrogen-fueled turbines. These projects support DOE’s Hydrogen Shot initiative, which seeks to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen by 80% to $1 per 1 kilogram in one decade to grow new, clean hydrogen pathways in the United States.

Source: press release

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