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Seven years toiling in a Lorain County Airport hangar has paid off for small business owner Mark Haberbusch, whose company has landed a multimillion-dollar defense contract to pursue liquid hydrogen-powered flight for drones.

Haberbusch’s company, NEOEx Systems, Inc, was awarded a $6.4 million subcontract earlier this year to develop systems that fuel and fly drones for the Army. NEOEx is developing a portable refueling station that delivers liquid hydrogen to drones weighing up to 55 pounds. Those drones, outfitted with NEOEx’s on-board storage and power system, can fly up to 20 hours and 1,000 miles.

The fuel cells will find homes in the Honda CR-V, heavy-duty trucks, construction and mining equipment, and power generators.

Hydrogen will likely remain a niche technology among cars, pickups, and SUVs, but like diesel has been an alternative to gas, Hydrogen still stands a decent chance of becoming the fuel of choice for long-distance trucking, heavy-duty work, and power generation in a zero-carbon-emissions future.

Plug Power Inc. (NASDAQ: PLUG), a global leader in comprehensive hydrogen solutions for the green hydrogen economy, has started operation of the largest liquid green hydrogen plant in the U.S. market.

A truly unique accomplishment, this is the largest electrolytic liquid hydrogen production plant, and largest PEM electrolyzer deployment operating in the U.S., representing a landmark achievement in Plug’s build-out of a vertically integrated hydrogen ecosystem.

At the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), across the United States, and all over the world, 2023 was a year to remember for clean hydrogen.

For decades, DOE has been laying the foundation of our nation’s clean-hydrogen economy by driving down costs and improving technologies through research, development, and demonstration (RD&D), while advancing technologies from the lab to demonstration phases and breaking down barriers to deployment and commercialization. 

The past twelve months saw much of that groundwork pay off.

A Northwestern University team has demonstrated a remarkable new way to generate electricity, with a paperback-sized device that nestles in soil and harvests power created as microbes break down dirt – for as long as there’s carbon in the soil.

Microbial fuel cells, as they’re called, have been around for more than 100 years. They work a little like a battery, with an anode, cathode and electrolyte – but rather than drawing electricity from chemical sources, they work with bacteria that naturally donate electrons to nearby conductors as they chow down on soil.

The road ahead has not gotten much easier for fuel cell cars, but trucks are a different matter. Just a couple of weeks ago, Isuzu and Honda kicked off a months-long road test of their GIGA FUEL CELL heavy-duty truck, ahead of a commercial launch anticipated in 2027. They better act fast, because more fuel cell trucks are headed for the highways this year.

This two-day event will convene stakeholders from industry, academia, national laboratories, and government to explore strategies to develop and demonstrate clean hydrogen storage, delivery, and dispensing infrastructure in three high-impact sectors:

In a valuable contribution to ongoing research projects on development of innovative bipolar plate designs for proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells, scientists from the University of Seville and the Paul Scherrer Institute have published two papers, one in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energies, and one in Electrochimica Acta.

Hydrogen will play a crucial role in decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors, enable the at-scale transport of energy to resource-constrained regions, and enable a clean and resilient energy system. Its deployment is at an inflection point – on one hand there are tailwinds such as a growing and gradually maturing pipeline of projects and supportive decarbonization regulation. On the other hand, there are headwinds: cost increases, project delays, continued regulatory uncertainty, and higher financing costs.

North America is desperate for hydrogen breakthroughs, and GH Power’s new renewable energy technology is one of the latest. The technology uses exothermic reactions with only two inputs (end of life or recycled aluminum and water) to create three extremely valuable green outputs: hydrogen, alumina (aluminum oxide), and exothermic heat.