News

AirUCI faculty Jack Brouwer is quoted in a San Francisco Chronicle article about using hydrogen technology to store surplus solar and wind energy that is currently being wasted.  Jack notes that hydrogen is effective for longer storage because it doesn’t lose energy over time and can be stored underground easily and cheaply.  “It’s the only known zero-emissions solution for enabling this massive and long-duration storage on the grid,” he says. “Eventually, we can’t keep installing more and more batteries and make it through the year.”  Read the article

A local Irvine neighborhood has been complaining for years about emissions from a nearby asphalt plant, and now they have data to back their claims.  A UCI-based team working with residents was led by Dean Baker, former director of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, and included AirUCI researchers.  The UCI team used monitoring equipment to capture data about the types of emissions in the area and measured unsafe levels of certain chemical compounds, and they are emphasizing a need for long term monitoring to review the issue.   Regulatory agencies are now conducting their own studies.  Read the article

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