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The race to serve increased demand for hydrogen as an energy source is a topic we’ve touched on in the past, and no doubt will again, as there’s a lot going on there.

Today we speak to Clyde Hydrogen about its new take on solving the problem. Believe it or not, they’re our only our second Glasgow-based startup in PreSeed Now’s two-and-a-half year history. More Scottish startups please! Get in touch.

But before we get to that:

• Exciting Instruments, which we covered way back in October 2022, has just announced a £4 million seed round led by Northern Gritstone. You read about startups REALLY early here at PreSeed Now!

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– Martin

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Clyde Hydrogen wants to turn tap water into plentiful green energy

Hydrogen could become a major energy source, replacing fossil fuels to power vehicles, manufacturing, and more. But producing enough green hydrogen to make it worthwhile is a real challenge.

Hydrogen is produced via electrolysis, the process of splitting H2O into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen molecules. But existing electrolysers struggle to operate safely at scale, and require large amounts of very pure water.

Challenges electrolysis faces include the dangerous, explosive potential of having hydrogen and oxygen together after separation, and requiring expensive materials to produce.

The race to create a reliable alternative is on, with startups such as Latent Drive, which we previously covered, among the players developing technology to do this.

Clyde Hydrogen is taking a different approach from others, with what CEO James Peck describes as “a completely new process” that draws on flow battery technology.

Essentially, it deals with the oxygen and the hydrogen in separate processes. It’s a hybrid approach combining traditional electrolysis with a flow battery.

If you’re technically minded, here’s how the company described it to me when I asked for a full breakdown:

This diagram illustrates what that means:

The Glasgow-based startup’s ‘mediator’ is a solution of water with metals dissolved into it.  

“The mediator solution is like ‘blood’ for hydrogen. In the reductor, as we call it, the mediator is protonated - protons are added. In the way blood carries oxygen from the lungs to the heart, the mediator does the same with hydrogen, from the reductor to the reactor whereby a catalytic reaction releases the hydrogen,” Peck says.

“The liquid then returns back to that original reductor to be recharged, and round it goes again.” 

See the diagram below for how this looks in practice.

Unlike traditional electrolysers, this system can work with tap water, rather than requiring highly purified water. It could potentially also work with sea water, Peck says.

He says that Clyde Hydrogen’s approach has a number of benefits. It doesn’t require expensive metals in large quantities, and it doesn’t use components that degrade and need replacing, thus reducing maintenance costs.

Peck says that because hydrogen is released in a catalytic reaction, it does not require energy to be achieved. 

“We've decoupled the hydrogen production from energy supply, so you can actually release hydrogen at different times to your energy needs, which makes it very, very good for green energy,

“And through that catalytic reaction, we’re able to release the hydrogen at pressure. Producing hydrogen at pressure is another key advantage economically. 

“Because hydrogen is volumetrically big, you have to store it, usually by compression. So there's a compressor process that comes after production, which has high capital costs and additional energy needs, which adds to the cost of hydrogen. By producing at high pressure, we can remove that part of the process.

“We've got an opportunity here to scale up the technology for larger production opportunities where current technology is struggling. We can achieve lower capital costs, lower production costs, and obviously the green energy angle, which is just as important.”

The story so far

Peck has a background in aerospace sales, selling things like turbine engines into the industry for companies including Rolls Royce. Over time, he developed an interest in decarbonising aviation, and he went to work for ZeroAvia, a company developing hydrogen-powered flight technology.

This opened his eyes to the potential hydrogen provided not just for aviation but other industries too.

“I quickly realised that a hydrogen infrastructure is super-important to the delivery of that technology. So you need lots of availability of green hydrogen at an economic price and available globally.

“The technology needed to be there to be able to deliver that.”

Peck was approached to meet the team spinning Clyde Hydrogen out from the University of Glasgow, and came on board as CEO just last month.

“Rather than deserting my friends at ZeroAvia, I saw this as a really important step to try to help this technology become a product to help deliver that ZeroAvia technology, and others as well.”

Clyde Hydrogen has so far scaled up its technology to the point where it has proven it works outside the lab. The next milestone is to build an integrated prototype that can produce one kilogram of hydrogen per day.

The startup aims to reach that point by the middle of next year, at which point it will be ready to build a larger pilot system ahead of commercial deployment.

Initial customers could include ground equipment manufacturers for airports who are looking to replace diesel generators with hydrogen generators, and manufacturers of vehicles like buses and trucks.

“Then we can scale up the system again to what I'd call the production-level system, which will then be able to support larger installations in the energy market,” says Peck.

“At that point, we've got a modular system that can cover pretty much any size capability, which allows us to then go after the decentralised, large-scale production sites for hydrogen.”

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