VOCID® H2Confirm: Monitoring Hydrogen Quality in Real Time
1. Applicant Information
Ana
Chris
Business Development
NanoScent
Kakhol St 2, Misgav, 2012700
Israel
Teammates
Eran Rom - Chief Technology Officer &
Dr. Orna Barash - VP of Product
Dr. Sima Israel - VP of R&D
2. Criteria - Applicants Responses
Which clean technology categories does your innovation cover?
Energy Storage, Green Hydrogen, Fuel cells, Energy Efficiency
Please select the category you’re submitting your application for
New Product, New Solution
Please select the phase of your innovation:
Validation
3. Questionnaire - Applicants Responses
Proposal/ Submission Title
VOCID® H2Confirm: Monitoring Hydrogen Quality in Real Time
Problem Statement
Hydrogen quality is important for many points across the value chain, including: hydrogen refueling stations (HRSs) where hydrogen consumption is <300kg/day, low-medium hydrogen producers who produce hydrogen at the range of 100-1000 Kg/day, and refineries that use gas steam reforming to produce >1 ton of hydrogen/day. Different stakeholders on the value chain have different needs with regards to hydrogen quality. This is directly linked to the way the hydrogen is produced and distributed. When contamination occurs, hydrogen quality can lead to financial losses, interrupted operations, and even damage to sensitive technologies like fuel cells. For this reason, strict standards are in place like ISO-14687. However, monitoring hydrogen quality is a challenge because it is very expensive, time-consuming, and relies on complicated logistics for sample handling and shipping. These problems collectively challenge hydrogen users and producers of monitoring their hydrogen quality.
Which do you think are the innovative factors of your idea?
Innovation is at the core of NanoScent’s VOCID®, a sensor-based monitoring system based on the company’s patent-protected chemiresistor nanotechnology. VOCID® H2Confirm measures gases, volatile organic compounds (VOC) and hydrogen impurities onsite and provides real time alerts for pass/fail results in the event of contamination or when hydrogen purity levels fall below a pre-programmed threshold. There are many innovations behind VOCID® H2Confirm, such as it being a modular solution that allows hydrogen customers to mix and match the modules they want to monitor. Also, the patent-protected chemiresistor VOCID® technology is flexible and can be applied to numerous use cases beyond hydrogen quality monitoring, an advantage that puts the company ahead of other startups with its ability to target multiple markets and address other needs such as quantifying methane blending.
Which benefits would your idea bring to the industry?
As mentioned previously, VOCID® H2Confirm can monitor hydrogen quality across the value chain, including for hydrogen refueling stations, green hydrogen production and grey hydrogen production. With these customers, we are already planning our first pilots. During the discussion phase, our customers expressed interested in VOCID® H2Confirm because of the many benefits provided to their operations, including: less logistical hassle by eliminating the constant need to send and ship hydrogen samples across borders, being a more cost-efficient solution for periodic testing and monitoring, as well as the ease of use. Current methods for hydrogen monitoring are complicated, expensive, time consuming and require high levels of expertise to conduct. NanoScent’s VOCID® H2Confirm addresses all of these pain points and thus provides its customers with numerous benefits.
To which challenges does your idea provide a solution to?
One of the challenges customers interested in hydrogen quality monitoring face is being able to find a user-friendly solution that can cater to their needs. Due to its modularity, the solution provided by NanoScent can fit the customers specific needs. For example, customers that are willing to monitor hydrogen quality when using electrolyzers, will usually require an analyzer that can sense oxygen and humidity. On the other hand customers that are selling compressors for HRS would want to make sure they do not cause any hydrogen contamination due to oily gasses entering the hydrogen. Other customers only wish to sense nitrogen since it is the most common gas used for maintenance. The flexibility of the solution allows us to cater to many customers who need to benefit from an efficient, quick, and economical solution.
4. Supporting attachments and links
