Manufacturing

The manufacturing market for hydrogen is more than $18B in the U.S. alone, and  comprises primarily petrochemical manufacturers, including petroleum refining (45%) and ammonia production (38%), followed by semiconductor processing, food oils processing, metallurgy, and NASA.   This market is largely supplied now by steam reformation of methane, which consumes non-renewable fuels and releases greenhouse gases.  These customers require very large volumes of hydrogen, and so are typically supplied by Praxair and Air Products, either with their own SMR plant capacity, or with SMR plants that they build onsite for the customer, thus the name “over-the-fence” hydrogen.  The distributed merchant gas market that we are focused on as Nanoptek’s first market is a subset of this $18B market.  However, we believe that the growing need to reduce or eliminate carbon will provide opportunities for Nanoptek to supply some of the large customers in this market with green low-cost over-the-fence hydrogen.  

A particularly strong niche for Nanoptek is to provide hydrogen and oxygen for manufacturing companies in areas where there is no access to natural gas with which to produce hydrogen. For example, for a manufacturer that requires hydrogen to expand into Khazakstan, where in spite of their natural gas reserves, there is no pipeline infrastructure, would be difficult and costly.  However, Khazakstan has plentiful land and sufficient sunlight, such that a large Nanoptek installation could provide that manufacturer's entire need for hydrogen and oxygen onsite.  In many cases both the hydrogen and the oxygen gases produced by the Solar Hydrogen Generators will be used for clean furnace combustion.  In float glass manufacture, the hydrogen is also used for its ability to absorb heat rapidly and efficiently. 

A second such opportunity exists in Kuwait, where oil refineries have no independent supply of hydrogen. Hydrogen is essential to refineries to crack the heavy crude into the lighter petroleum products, including gasoline, and is also used to take the sulfur out of the fuel.  However, Kuwait has no supply of natural gas from which to make the hydrogen. With their available and plentiful land, sunlight, and ocean water, a large installation of Nanoptek solar hydrogen generators would provide them all the hydrogen that they need.     

 

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