Figure 1. Hydrogen is a viable, green fuel for future transportation needs. But the DC power supply technology to make this happen is a key challenge for wider use of hydrogen for industrial applications. Source: NeeltranFossil fuels have powered the planet for centuries, providing a bridge into the industrial revolution and beyond. Today, however, because of environmental concerns, economics, and the simple fact that this non-renewable resource will ultimately run out, there has been a massive push toward alternative energy solutions. Batteries are one choice for electrical power storage, but they come with certain drawbacks (such as the environmental impacts of lithium) that have not been overcome using current technologies.

Green hydrogen, however, poses a solution that is entirely renewable and has been in use in various forms for many years. Hydrogen is produced by the electrolysis of water, passing electrical current through a conductive brine solution. This breaks water down into its component elements, producing hydrogen with only oxygen as a byproduct. Electricity in this scenario is provided by renewable technologies like wind and solar, creating a portable power storage medium without the environmental impacts of coal, gasoline or other hydrocarbon-based fuels.

Unlike other near-to-mid-future technologies, such as carbon-based supercapacitors or potential improvements in battery cells, the use of hydrogen power in vehicular applications has already been proven, most visibly in the form of municipal buses. On a consumer level, the infrastructure for fueling more vehicles using hydrogen instead of gasoline is under development in Europe and California and is expected to keep expanding into other areas.

Beyond automotive fuel, uses for hydrogen power include on-site energy storage. When a solar cell or wind turbine cannot produce enough power during off-peak times to effectively pass it on to the grid, it could instead use what charge it does produce to create hydrogen, which can then be efficiently converted into electrical power at a later time. Alternatively, excess — or purpose-produced —hydrogen can be combined with natural gas as a fuel supplement, or used in industrial hydrogen applications, potentially doing away with the need to convert it back to electrical power altogether.

Appropriate DC power supplies for electrolysis

While there are other ways to produce hydrogen, such as coal gasification and steam reformation of natural gas, the electrolysis process can be both cost-effective and environmentally friendly. This process can also be combined with carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) for production as this technology continues to evolve. Since electrolysis is a matter of simply passing a steady DC current through water, the challenge becomes finding and installing a power supply that is suitable for the job.

Neeltran, a New Milford, Connecticut-based manufacturer of DC power systems, is uniquely positioned to provide appropriate rectifiers and DC power supplies for hydrogen energy generation. At their highest end, Neeltran’s chemical production power supplies can be specified at up to a 1,500 V DC and 130,000 A output for multiple units, giving a total power of 195 MW. Typical units, however, run from 1 MW to 30 MW, allowing for a wide range of options. Cooling can be implemented with the use of oil, water and air, and a variety of PLCs and remote monitoring solutions are available to suit a particular hydrogen production operation’s need.

Neeltran has over 40 years’ experience building customized power supplies and is one of the few manufacturers in the world that builds and tests its own DC rectifiers and rectifier-transformer power systems in-house. Their power supplies have a long history in the chemical industry and are well suited to electrolysis for hydrogen production now, and as this technology develops into the future.

Learn more about power supplies and rectification for green energy by contacting Neeltran.