NewHydrogen moves to automate its clean hydrogen test unit as it eyes first commercial pilot plant

California-based NewHydrogen has announced plans to automate the engineering test unit for its ThermoLoop technology, a process that uses water and heat rather than electricity to produce what the company calls the world’s cheapest clean hydrogen. The move is intended to speed the company’s progress toward its first commercial pilot plant.

The test unit will act as the bridge between the company’s laboratory-scale experiments and a future pilot facility, and is designed specifically to validate the physics, chemistry and reaction kinetics underpinning ThermoLoop. NewHydrogen says using results from such a unit is the standard, industry-accepted route to designing a commercial pilot plant.

The announcement builds on the company’s recent progress through “Stage Gate One” of its development programme, moving it from research into the engineering phase, as well as a strategic collaboration with NuCube Energy to explore nuclear-powered hydrogen production. NewHydrogen argues that conventional green hydrogen, made by splitting water with electrolysers powered by renewable electricity, remains constrained by the high cost of that electricity, which its water-and-heat approach aims to avoid.