News

AirUCI faculty Jack Brouwer is quoted in an article on the potential of green hydrogen to generate power while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  The article in Bloomberg Law discusses this as an important option in the transition from carbon-based power sources while dozens of major companies are signing on to back hydrogen as a source of clean energy.  Jack has been advocating that the Biden administration consider repurposing existing—and in some cases abandoned—natural gas pipelines to transport hydrogen. 
 
Making that transition would not be technically difficult because most natural gas pipelines are capable of carrying hydrogen, with minor tweaks.  “This is what the federal government should be responsible for doing,” Jack said.  “This is a shared infrastructure.  It enables long-duration storage, it lets you transmit it across mountains—it’s got a lot of features that we like.”  Read the article

An article in Yahoo Finance quotes AirUCI faculty Jack Brouwer on the topic of repurposing natural gas pipelines for transporting hydrogen.  With the Biden Administration's new emphasis on sustainable energy, these pipelines will be used less and less but could be converted to moving hydrogen for use in transportation fuels.  However, mixing natural gas molecules with hydrogen molecules creates problems that Jack says can be overcome by replacing compressors and steel pipes, which may become brittle and crack over time when exposed to hydrogen.
 
“We must investigate this for every single pipe we put hydrogen into,” said Jack, “but it’s a phenomenon we can manage because it’s slow.”  Problem pipes and compressors could be replaced over the course of years, he said. Or pipes could be protected with coatings applied from the inside by robotic devices called pigs that are currently used for pipeline inspection and maintenance.  “Just put some spray-painting equipment on that same device, and there you go, right down the whole pipeline,” Jack said.   Read the article

AirUCI faculty Steve Davis is among the most highly cited researchers in the world.  Last week, Clarivate, an analytics company, announced its annual list of highly cited researchers. To make the list a researcher’s publications need to be in the top one percent of citations in a field in a given year.  Twenty UCI researchers are on the list, and 10 are from the School of Physical Sciences, including Steve — many congratulations!

AirUCI faculty Jack Brouwer is quoted in a New York Times article on the increasing use of hydrogen as a fuel, especially for transportation.  Jack is director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center, AirUCI partner organization at UCI, which has experimented with hydrogen for years and formed partnerships with local governments and major corporations to popularize its use in Southern California.
 
Jack does not think hydrogen will become the dominant energy source soon, but he argues that it has great potential as a fuel for vehicles, power plants, and appliances.  Hydrogen, he said, will complement the use of lithium-ion batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, and natural gas.  “Almost any objective analysis for getting to zero CO2 emissions includes hydrogen,” said Jack,  Read the article