photo by: Avium LLC

An Avium electrolyzer stack prototype.

With a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, the University of Kansas and its partners will be working to make clean hydrogen fuel more affordable.

Clean hydrogen, also referred to as green hydrogen, is a sustainable fuel source that is made by using renewable electricity such as solar or wind power to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. That hydrogen can then be stored in fuel cells for use later.

The push towards green hydrogen is essential in reducing carbon emissions, particularly in industry, transportation and agriculture. Unlike most hydrogen production methods that release greenhouse gases, green hydrogen is made using renewable energy, making it vital for achieving net-zero goals.

photo by: University of Kansas

Kevin Leonard

The work at KU and local startup Avium will focus on developing new catalysts — metal alloys that speed up the chemical reactions needed to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen — and technologies to enhance the efficiency and reliability of green hydrogen production.

“I want to be energy efficient,” said Kevin Leonard, a professor of chemical and petroleum engineering at KU, as well as a member of KU’s Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis and chief science officer of Avium. “It keeps costs down, but also you’re getting better utilization of that energy you have, and so the catalyst that we’ve been developing is to make that process as energy efficient as possible.”

Leonard said that he had been working on catalysts for a long time. In 2017, Leonard and KU graduate student Joseph Barforoush created new catalysts that improved the efficiency of green hydrogen production, leading to the founding of Avium, based in Lawrence. Leonard said that there’s a lot of interest in green hydrogen for lots of reasons.

“Hydrogen is used in a lot of different industries,” Leonard told the Journal-World. “Like for example, like the production of ammonia for fertilizers, cement production and a lot of the chemical industry uses it.”

Leonard also mentioned that there are growing needs in power generation, and clean hydrogen is gaining interest as a way of storing the excess energy produced by renewable sources such as wind or solar.

“With alternative energy like wind and solar, there are needs to essentially try to store that energy so it can be used at a later time,” Leonard said. “And so what the green hydrogen does is in terms of the power generation, is it takes that electricity that’s produced from either wind or solar and converts that electrical energy and essentially stores it in the chemical bond of hydrogen.”

photo by: Screenshot from Center for International Environmental Law

The Hydrogen Rainbow Spectrum, which explains how different industries produce hydrogen through a variety of processes. A majority of these processes involve using fossil fuels.

The Department of Energy reports that the KU project is part of a $750 million initiative, funding 52 projects across 24 states, aimed at lowering the cost of clean hydrogen and strengthening America’s leadership in the expanding hydrogen industry.

As part of the project, KU students and postdoctoral researchers will receive hands-on training, and the award will also fund technical training and career-building opportunities for Kansas City-area students this summer.

“We’re going to target students from particular areas to essentially bring them in so they can learn about alternative energy and green hydrogen, but also so they could see what a startup is like,” Leonard said. “They’re going to spend some time in Avium. They’re going to see what university life is like, so spend some time at KU, and they’re going to see what trade school is like and spend some time at Peaslee Tech.”