Hydrogen Gas Generator

Example of Off-the-Shelf Generator

• 99.9% purity, 500ml/min, 4 atmosphere. [1].
• At 4 atmospheres, can fill a 1000 gallon propane tank - in 4 days. At 1 atmosphere - one day!
• $3500 of generators (same as above but at $700/unit) gets us 1.5 kWhr of usable storage with a generator. That is the same cost as a 20kW new battery bank - which can last 10 years in off-grid apps. We are a factor of 13x higher capital cost than batteries at this stage - which can be solved only by reducing cost of hydrogen generation equipment.
• Ideal conditions - 40kWhr to generate 1 kg of hydrogen - [2]
• Look at basic capital cost from last link:

• For sensemaking - $1-5k capital costs per kW electrolyzer. A 1 kW electrolyzer - for reference, the 500 ml/hr generator in link above requires 180W. If we take the electrolyzer above at $1k for 500 ml/hr - we need about 5 of those for 1kW of electrolyzer - or about $5k. But it takes about 24x as much electrolyzer to generate 10kG/day (or 10 gallons per day). Each 1000 gallon propane tank can store about 1.2kg of hydrogen, at 4 atmospheres. Capital cost there is $5k x4 or $20k for the electrolyzer. That's where open source comes in - to attain mass production via production by the masses. The complexity cost coupled with parasitic loss can be displaced by distributed production.

Links

• Solar Hydrogen Production
• Hydrogen Compression