Hi, what are you looking for?
The Agrivoltaics Plot Thickens: Energy Crisis, Farm Crisis, & Water Crisis All In Play
Clean Energy Industry, Let’s Not Get Under Joe Manchin’s Thumb Again
Polysilicon Glut & Cheaper Solar Panels?
Floating “Artificial Leaves” Produce Clean Fuel
Solar & Storage Industry Charts Course For U.S. Manufacturing Renaissance Thanks To Inflation Reduction Act
Clean Energy Industry, Let’s Not Get Under Joe Manchin’s Thumb Again
Virginia Offshore Wind Project Could Power 600,000 Homes, Create Over 1,000 Jobs
How Wind Energy Can Help Us Breathe Easier
U.S. Department Of Energy Finds Record Production & Job Growth In U.S. Wind Power Sector
Renewables to Equal 22% of U.S. Electricity Generation in 2022 — U.S. EIA Forecast
Decarbonizing Data Centers — It’s Fun!
Most Renewables Now Cheaper Than Cheapest Coal
Kenya Elections: Electric Mobility, Utility Scale Battery Storage, Energy Efficiency & Green Hydrogen Feature Prominently
More Electricity from Wind & Solar than Nuclear for 1st Time in USA
Funding Notice: Community Geothermal Heating & Cooling Design & Deployment
Want Lithium from USA? Galvanic Energy May Have Enough for 50 Million EVs
1st Vehicle-to-Grid System on NYC Grid Launches
Tesla Semi Specs Change, Chinese Model 3 To Use CATL M3P Batteries
3 Barriers to Large-Scale Energy Storage Deployment
Cummins Calls Dibs On New Long Duration Energy Storage Iron Salt Formula
1st Vehicle-to-Grid System on NYC Grid Launches
Comparing The US & China On Climate, Economy, & Other Outcomes Should Be Deeply Humbling For America
San Diego Electric School Bus Puts Electricity Into The Grid
Can Virtual Power Plants Provide Revenue for Householders?
ERCOT & Tesla: How Virtual Power Plants Can Help Texas Electricity Grid & Save Lives
New Jersey is Ready for 100% Clean Electricity & Buildings
A Guide To Fuel Efficient Driving — Part Three (2022 Update)
New Heat Pumps For Old Apartments
Our Water Heaters Could Help Save the Wilderness
Heat Pumps Proved Themselves During A Harsh Maine Winter
Sky News: No One In Australia Wants Electric Cars
Formula One Finalizes 2026 Engine Rules — More Electrons, Fewer Molecules (With Video)
A Fast Transition To Electric Mobility Can Help Reduce Kenya’s Widening Trade Deficit
Want Lithium from USA? Galvanic Energy May Have Enough for 50 Million EVs
Australia Taking Bold Steps Toward Electric Car Future
This Go-Anywhere, Eye-Catching E-Bike Is A Honey
Ford F-150 Lightning — CleanTechnica Review
Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Maintenance Cost Update at 3 Years & 27,000 Miles
75,000 Miles With My Tesla Model 3: Maintenance Costs, FSD (Beta), Hauling, Etc.
Putting The EcoFlow DELTA Pro Power Station To A Hard Test
14% Of New Car Sales In Germany Fully Electric, & 26% Have A Plug
22% Of New Car Sales Now Electric In The Netherlands!
Germany’s EV Share Cold Comfort Against 34% Shortfall In Overall Auto Market
UK Plugin EV Share Shrinks In July, BEVs Still Growing
French New Auto Sales Crash 37%, BEVs Still Growing
This Go-Anywhere, Eye-Catching E-Bike Is A Honey
Ford F-150 Lightning — CleanTechnica Review
Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Maintenance Cost Update at 3 Years & 27,000 Miles
75,000 Miles With My Tesla Model 3: Maintenance Costs, FSD (Beta), Hauling, Etc.
Putting The EcoFlow DELTA Pro Power Station To A Hard Test
Ford F-150 Lightning — CleanTechnica Review
Tesla Q4 Shareholder Conference Call — Watch & Listen Here
Volkswagen Group — In-Depth Conference Call Highlights Company’s Focus On Transition
Bill McKibben On Unions, Tesla, & Elon Musk — CleanTechnica Interview
How To Watch & Listen To Tesla Q3 Earnings Call — Most Useful Livestream
HERO from Star Scientific uses a proprietary catalyst to turn green hydrogen and oxygen into a heat source that rivals burning fossil fuels.
By
Published
Star Scientific is a small enterprise founded near the Australia city of Newcastle 25 years ago by Stephen Horvath, a nuclear engineer who wanted to commercialize nuclear fusion by using heavy hydrogen containing unstable sub-atomic particles called muons. His son Andrew spent a lot of time in his father’s laboratory and began tinkering with things on his own.
Those experiments led to the development of a catalyst that reacts with hydrogen and oxygen to create heat. Not just any heat, but 700º C (1292º F) of heat — hot enough to spin turbines that rely on superheated steam. Andrew Horvath calls it the HERO process, which stands for “hydrogen energy release optimizer.”
Let’s stop right there. This has all the earmarks of a scam. It’s one of those “too good to be true” stories that may actually be too good to be true. In fact, if it were not covered this week in an email to CleanTechnica from Bloomberg Green, we probably wouldn’t be giving it any coverage at all. But there are those who think the process has merit.
“Star Scientific technology can be scaled up and used for a variety of different applications, either direct energy generation through a turbine or just thermal heating,” Scott Donne, a professor at the School of Environmental and Life Science at the University of Newcastle tells Bloomberg Green. Newcastle, for those who have not had the pleasure of visiting this inviting seaside community about 40 miles north of Sydney, is one of the places where coal is exported from Australia to world markets 24 hours a day.
“Around where we are in Newcastle, there are four very large coal fired power stations that basically use steam to actually drive their turbines,” Donne says. “At the moment, it’s done with coal-fired power but it could conceivably be done with hydrogen using the existing infrastructure.”
Andrew Horvath adds, “We think there are a lot of opportunities in existing steam turbines that have some longevity,” citing the example of Japan where 70% of its turbines still have 40 years of life left. “Why would you throw them away? They’re already connected to the grid.” The HERO process could ultimately allow power plant operators that burn coal to retrofit them to run on steam heated by green hydrogen without having to construct a completely new plant.
The key, Andrew Horvath says, is that today the only way to make heat from hydrogen is to burn it. “We don’t burn hydrogen and that’s going to be the real key that we’ve been driving and people are taking notice of,” he says.
Horvath says HERO could bring emissions-free heat to virtually any commercial activity. He says Star Scientific is getting dozens of emails a day from prospective clients and the company is in talks with water treatment companies, brewers, dairy firms, meat packers, and desalination specialists. “There’s so much demand, the market’s coming to us,” he says. In January 2021, the company signed an agreement with the Philippines government to study retrofitting some of that country’s coal fired power plants.
A pilot project to test the system at a factory run by a local unit of Mars Inc. is awaiting regulatory approval, which Horvath expects will come in 2023. The technology “offers enormous potential across the food manufacturing industry,” Bill Heague, general manager of Mars Food Australia, tells Bloomberg Green. “Thermal energy is crucial to the business of cooking food and this technology has the capability to create limitless heat without any combustion and zero emissions.”
In 2020, HERO won the prestigious S&P Global Platts “Best New Energy Technology” award. In 2021, Star Scientific won tops honors in the New Economy category at 24th annual South By Southwest event in Texas. “The award is recognition of our ability to put renewable hydrogen into use with HERO today, to solve real energy challenges, and in particular the energy draw of the digital economy,” Horvath told Central Coast Community News.
“The most logical, viable pathway to decarbonizing our entire world is through technologies that address the heat and energy requirements across a product’s whole production process, and HERO does that. The beauty of HERO is its scalability. When partnered with technology such as the new generation of super-critical sCO2 turbines, HERO can be utilized for small scale, off the grid power generation purposes, particularly in regional and remote locations.” Then at SXSW 2022, the HERO technology again made it to the top of the awards list as a finalist in the Innovation category, according to LinkedIn.
HERO produces heat when a gaseous mix of hydrogen and oxygen flows over its patented catalytic coating, the LinkedIn post reveals. This flameless catalytic reaction generates the full range of industrial scale heat from 190° to over 1000° C and its only byproduct is laboratory-pure water. This globally patented clean energy technology is already securing both government and commercial contracts.
The 8,500 coal-fired power plants in the world producing nearly 25% of total electricity could transition to climate-friendly, hydrogen based HERO heat with no cost of conversion to the operator. Not only does it preserve existing infrastructure and jobs, it delivers affordable green electricity to the community.
Star Scientific is also developing applications for HERO for regional and local heating and cooling and is using the efficiency and high thermal output of HERO to create new desalination solutions for communities that are suffering from extended drought conditions. Power for data centers and new strategies for industrial and district heating are also being explored. By leveraging the global green bond market, Star Scientific’s innovative Heat As A Service business model removes economic barriers to power plant adoption and global technology distribution.
There are a couple of quibbles keen observers might have. First, green hydrogen is not especially abundant these days. Every time the word “hydrogen” enters a conversation, the fossil fuel crowd is quick to jump on the hydrogen bandwagon, as long as they can make it from methane, which is often mischaracterized at “natural gas,” even though it is no more “natural” than coal or oil. Any discussion of hydrogen must be careful to exclude sources that rely on methane, which the industry likes to disguise with the pleasant sounding moniker “blue hydrogen.” Baloney. Don’t fall for their lies.
Second, what we have here is a startling new process that relies on a secret catalyst that we know nothing about. There are no laboratory tests we can access, no peer reviewed studies we can reference, and no independent research we can examine. We have to take it on faith that the top secret catalyst Star Scientific says it discovered is not harmful to the environment and does not create carbon emissions in its making.
All we have to go on is the fact that a few trials have been approved and the happy talk from a local scientist who may or may not be unbiased. And those awards. They, more than anything, make the news about HERO technology something to get excited about.
Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his home in Florida or anywhere else the Singularity may lead him. You can follow him on Twitter but not on any social media platforms run by evil overlords like Facebook.
Advertise with CleanTechnica to get your company in front of millions of monthly readers.
While Australia holds a summit to discuss car emissions standards, Sky News presenters say that no one wants electric cars. At the same time,…
The government of Australia is making a serious commitment to the EV revolution with new policy initiatives.
In media releases this week, Pepper Money and Bank Australia announced that they would be putting their financial weight behind the rEVolution — the…
Both Tesla and its vibrant CEO Elon Musk have posted a few production updates on Twitter in the last few days. Interesting numbers have…
Copyright © 2021 CleanTechnica. The content produced by this site is for entertainment purposes only. Opinions and comments published on this site may not be sanctioned by and do not necessarily represent the views of CleanTechnica, its owners, sponsors, affiliates, or subsidiaries.
