Help Me Teach Kids About Hydrogen!

Alex Hines is organizing this fundraiser.

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My Journey

My name is Alex Hines and I am pursuing a J.D. at the University of Dayton Law School and a M.S. in Renewable and Clean Energy Engineering. I hold a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Cornell University. I am passionate about energy policy; environmental protection and I will hopefully become an energy industry professional when I graduate. From my experience, I have noticed a general lack of knowledge about energy storage and why a hydrogen economy will reduce climate change, pollution, and environmental degradation. I want to help lay the educational foundation for a future hydrogen economy. I also would like to inspire other disadvantaged groups and environmentally-minded youth to pursue STEM subjects. This project will change that. Over the past 5 months, I have designed and built a prototype of a mini electrolyzer, named GreenEd, that will be used to teach high school-aged students about hydrogen production and renewable energy.

The Hydrogen Economy

Hydrogen gas, H2, is the lightest and smallest element in the periodic table and the most abundant in the universe. On Earth, we can use electricity via an electrolyzer to produce H2, then pass it through a fuel cell to generate the electricity again which is an excellent way to store unused energy from the power grid. Unfortunately, 95% of hydrogen is “gray” produced from Steam-Methane Reforming and less than 1% is “green” produced from electricity from renewables. The H2-fuel cell system’s advantage over the battery is that hydrogen’s energy density is much higher (120 MJ/kg) than a typical battery's, which means you can store more energy using less mass. There is no hydrogen economy yet, due to a lack of infrastructure since only about 40 hydrogen fueling stations exist in the U.S.

What is GreenEd?

GreenEd (short for “Green Education”) is a mini electrolyzer that will be used to teach students about an important step in the hydrogen economy - hydrogen production. An electrolyzer is an electrochemical cell that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using an electric current in a process called electrolysis.

Look at this diagram of electrolysis from the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association:

Since GreenEd is an alkaline electrolyzer, there are two conductive electrodes, an anode and a cathode are separated and emerged in an aqueous alkaline solution (H2O + NaOH) as known as the electrolyte. Sodium hydroxide, NaOH, dissociates into Na+ OH- ions in the electrolyte which allows the current to flow. Redox reactions occur at each electrode as a current is passed through them which produces hydrogen, H2 and oxygen gas, O2. The gasses are then each passed through a tube which is filled with a desiccant to remove the moisture from the gas stream. H2 and O2 then can pass through two gas ports located on the left side which can then be hooked up to a fuel cell to generate electricity.

Check out this demonstration video of GreenEd!

Who is GreenEd For?

GreenEd is intended for highly motivated high school-aged students who want to learn about hydrogen production and renewable energy. The box contains a 14+ age restriction because that is the typical age students begin high school and implies a certain level of maturity. A GreenEd unit is intended to be operated by the teacher or student in a standard lab setting or outside. This is because NaOH is caustic (pH of 10) which makes it very dangerous to handle and hydrogen gas is flammable so GreenEd should only be operated under a flame hood or outside. I am planning on offering my GreenEd units for an affordable $300 which is much cheaper than a conventional laboratory electrolyzer which cost more than $1,000.

Why GreenEd?

Many people have heard of various types of renewable energy technologies (solar, wind, geothermal, biofuels, etc) and some may even know how they work. However, they have never heard of alternative energy storage methods such as hydrogen and fuel cells. This is because their knowledge is limited by what they were taught in school. Many people have never heard of a fuel cell or an electrolyzer for example. This surprisingly affects all students regardless of socioeconomic status, race, gender, and geographic location because science curricula across the United States do not spend enough time on renewable energy. How can we pave the way for a hydrogen economy if we don't know the fundamentals? This is the purpose of GreenEd - a tool for science communication to close the knowledge gap about hydrogen technologies one student at a time.

How Will the Funds be Spent?

All of the funds that I receive for this project will go towards the development of a final product ready to reach as many students as possible. Prototyping is an expensive and difficult endeavor. The current prototype is just that, a prototype or a minimum viable product used to visualize the idea, not a final product. To mass produce these electrolyzer units, I must order each component in bulk. Most of the electronics are cheap enough for me to order in bulk, oxygen sensors are expensive, and I need to order specially designed printed circuit boards (PCBs). My custom shipping boxes (which use detailed graphics) are high quality and are expensive if ordered in bulk.

I have gone through several vendors for the many components used to build a single GreenEd unit and each one has surprisingly different quality. I have settled on the cheapest vendor for components, but not on the method. The prototype units are made using FDM (fusion deposition modeling) which is a type of 3-D printing method and is the cheapest, but not the highest quality. I have used SLS (selective laser sintering) and MJF (multi-jet fusion) which are higher-quality 3-D printing methods, but the quality will vary across hundreds of units. Really for this type of product, I need to order urethane casted parts or injection molded parts for the best quality that is consistent across hundreds of units. This will be the bulk of the cost and where the bulk of the funding will be used. The rest of the funding will be used to form a non-profit or some other organization to disseminate and advertise the products to students and teachers. If I reach the full goal, I will file a design patent with the USPTO and hire a patent agent.

I appreciate every dollar I receive! Your funds are not only helping me fund this project but fueling the knowledge of future generations of students everywhere. Please share this campaign with as many interested people!