BayoTech, an American cleantech company founded in 2015, provides hydrogen generation systems for the agriculture, fuel cells, and energy industries. The company disrupts the established centralized hydrogen supply chain with a new, highly efficient model of local hydrogen production hubs. BayoTech's compact and adaptable systems can manufacture up to 1,000 kilograms of hydrogen per day using existing natural gas pipelines or co-located biogas resources.
Challenges: hydrogen fuel
The majority of hydrogen (Hâ‚‚) is currently produced in large production facilities. Hydrogen gas must be liquefied, transported, and stored for days to weeks at the expense of carbon emissions in order to reach customers.
The steam-methane reforming (SMR) process produces 95% of the available hydrogen (about 60 million tons) today. This established industrial process generates hydrogen from a methane (CH4) source, such as natural gas, and high-temperature water steam (700 °C–1,000 °C). In SMR, methane reacts with steam under pressures between 3–25 bar (1 bar = 14.5 psi) in the presence of a catalyst to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide (CO): CH4 + H2O (+ heat) → CO + H2. Due to the endothermic nature of the SMR reaction, heat must be given for the reaction to proceed.
Then the water-gas shift (WGS) process generates additional hydrogen and carbon dioxide from carbon monoxide and steam using a catalyst: CO + H2O → CO2 + H2 (+ heat). This process generates heat (exothermic). Carbon dioxide and other impurities are removed from the gas stream to produce essentially pure hydrogen. In current systems the WGS causes an increase in the temperature of the process flow, which restricts the WGS conversion fraction.
BayoTech Technology
BayoTech offers tiny, modular distributed systems for on-site hydrogen production at the point of need, eliminating the need for liquefying, transporting, and storing, hence reducing carbon footprint. Due to the simplicity of its design, maintenance expenses are also significantly reduced.
BayoTech’s hydrogen generators employ nested-flow technology to leverage high heat recuperation to maximize energy efficiency.
Nested-Flow Technology
The technology of nested-flow was developed at Sandia National Laboratories. It is a system of flow channels developed through the nesting of circular tubes. These tubes offer a flow channel between the inside of an outer tube and the outside of an inner tube. The flow channel is kept open by incorporating spacers within the flow channel that do not significantly restrict flow. For heat transfer between two fluid flows moving in opposite directions, one fluid is heated while the other is cooled.
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