Special Seminar: Low-Cost and Low-Carbon Hydrogen Production and Hydrogen Storage

Green hydrogen is elusive. Hydrogen storage is difficult. At this talk we introduce innovative solutions to both.  Starting with non-food agricultural residues, we can produce hydrogen at 0.83 USD/kg with a carbon intensity score (GREET.net) of 0.36 kg CO2/kg H2.  This cost is one-fourth of current wholesale rates for hydrogen from natural gas, with a carbon footprint 25 times smaller.  Our solid-state hydrogen storage solution is not a metal, but is based on silicon.  Specific energy costs of 7.72 USD/kWh are at least 10 times better than batteries, and the gravimetric density is at least 7 times smaller (Li v H).   Going deeper, with dry feedstock we can produce permanent (non-labile) biochar that makes our hydrogen production carbon-negative.  Deeper still, we can use carbothermal reduction to produce raw silicon, which, when used in our storage technology, drops the cost in half.  This platform technology can even process plastics (RID 1 through 6), and ruminant manure to produce a tar-free syngas with many useful downstream products (e.g. NH3, MeOH).  Green Fortress is planning to move to the northern Central Valley in February and would like to introduce these technologies to the researchers at esteemed UCD.

Peter Schubert is a professor emeritus from Indiana University and also a Purdue University retiree.  Prior to academia, he was a technical fellow in the automotive industry in a $5B global company.  Peter holds 43 patents in the US, plus 13 in the EU.  He has published two textbooks and over 120 technical works covering a wide variety of fields.  Dr. Schubert is a licensed professional engineer, and is the CEO of Green Fortress Energy, a university start-up established as a C-corp in 2016.  He has served as PI on $5.4M in research grants from DOE, USDA, NSF, NASA, DoD, and GSA, plus various state agencies.  From 2011 through 2024, Peter was the Director of the Richard G. Lugar Center for Renewable Energy, covering the entire Indiana University system.