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The Phases of Hydrogen Based on Vapor Pressure and Temperature [1] |
LH2 Era™ blog
Liquid Hydrogen: The Infinity Fuel for a Sustainable Future™
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Monday, March 17, 2025
Fundamentals of Liquid Hydrogen
Monday, March 10, 2025
Survey Results of Liquid Hydrogen Users (n = 75)
View detailed results here |
- How can adoption of liquid hydrogen be accelerated in your industry?
- Which liquid hydrogen applications do you see becoming common in 5 yrs? 10 yrs? Longer?
- Where is liquid hydrogen currently getting the most traction (i.e., region or country)? Why?
- What role should hydrogen play in the transition to a more sustainable future?
- Is there any other feedback that you want to provide?
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Safety with Liquid Hydrogen
Friday, February 7, 2025
Retrograde US Energy Policy
Federal Energy Policy
What About Hydrogen?
- Hydrogen produces no greenhouse gases and no pollution of any kind when used to produce electricity with fuel cells. If burned in a turbine or other combustion engine, it produces some NOx (as all combustion processes do) that can be minimized with various design and operational parameters.
- Hydrogen can store energy at nearly unlimited scale from intermittent renewables when excess generation capacity is available, and be used to generate electricity when demand exceeds generation capacity.
- Hydrogen's unparalleled specific energy relative to any other conventional fuel enables high performance sustainable solutions across multiple mobile and transportation sectors (e.g., aviation, rail, maritime, trucking, etc.)
- Hydrogen provides unique energy resiliency and eliminates fuel logistics dependencies for remote or isolated regions.
The Path Ahead
- Federal funding for hydrogen programs, including the hydrogen hubs, will be largely gutted. One potential exception is military applications where hydrogen addresses strategic defense and national security challenges that no other approach can match.
- States and local policies and funding will help in a few US regions. California will remain the hydrogen hotbed it has been for many years. Hawaii, New York, Pennsylvania, and parts of New England also have or may provide supportive policies for hydrogen. Texas will be a wildcard since there is much in place for hydrogen production, but may have fractured policies depending on the area (e.g., Gulf coast vs rural areas). However, many other states and locales already have policies that are hostile toward renewables and hydrogen, and will be emboldened to double down on derailing permitting and similar tactics with the new federal policies.
- Private sector funding for hydrogen systems and products has been extensive in some industry sectors and regions. Many of these hydrogen applications have demonstrated performance and economic viability at various commercial readiness levels. It's unlikely that private investors will walk away from sunk cost investments if there is an opportunity to get a reasonable return. The challenge is which global markets are the best targets if most of the US is off the table, which leads to my final prediction.
- Global regions will likely stay the course, or even accelerate hydrogen plans, as the US backs away. China will build on its lead as the largest producer and user of hydrogen and associated systems. The European Union, United Kingdom, India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia may find increased interest in new hydrogen projects in their regions with the drying up of US funds and incentives. The same for other countries and regions with established and emerging hydrogen programs such as Canada, South America, Middle East, Africa, and other countries in the Asia and Indo-Pacific regions.
[2] Executive Order, Jan 20, 2025.
[3] Secretarial Order, Feb 5, 2025.
Matt Moran is the Managing Member at Moran Innovation LLC, and previous Managing Partner at Isotherm Energy. He's been developing power and propulsion systems for more than 40 years; and break-through liquid, slush, and gaseous hydrogen systems since the mid-1980s. Matt was also the Sector Manager for Energy & Materials in his last position at NASA where he worked for 31 years. He's been a co-founder in seven technology startups; and provided R&D and engineering support to many organizations. Matt has three patents and more than 50 publications including the Cryogenic Fluid Management series. He also teaches courses, workshops, and webinars on liquid hydrogen systems.
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Cryogenic Hydrogen Thermal Design Options

Sunday, January 5, 2025
Hydrogen Storage Options
Wednesday, December 25, 2024
Focusing on a Hydrogen Future
- Liquid hydrogen systems development (execute): In my previous post, I mentioned the hydrogen microgrid project, LH2 drones and automated fueling systems, and NASA lunar lander development activities my company supports. These are core company projects, and the first two will remain top business priorities in 2025 with the goal of full scale demonstrations.
- Knowledge transfer (invest): I've already invested a good deal of time into creating various resources and tools for developing liquid hydrogen systems, most of them freely accessible on my Training page. Have also contributed to LH2 related standards and guidelines development, and will continue those efforts. Next, I'll be creating, training, and fine-tuning a hydrogen AI agent called H2 Sage using: curated public domain data; my intellectual property data from 40 years of hydrogen technology and systems development; and the most powerful LLM APIs available (e.g., OpenAI o3 and future frontier models).
- Space projects (delegate): This is a very difficult pivot for me. I worked directly for NASA for 31 years, and continued supporting them on various contracts for another 9 years. Have also done space related work for DOD and multiple private sector organizations over that timeframe. But it's time to let my younger and more talented colleagues at NASA, its contractor teams, and commercial space to continue forward in this inspiring and important area without me.
- Talkers vs doers (delete): Not long ago, only chemistry teachers and professionals working in just a few industry sectors talked about hydrogen. Now almost everybody - especially on social media and from various news outlets - seems to have an opinion on the topic. On one end of the "talker" spectrum are hydrogen haters (see my old post), and on the other end are those pitching hydrogen concepts they cannot deliver. Both ends, and many talkers in between, often have little or no actual experience with hydrogen. And they are impeding our progress toward addressing climate change with misinformation and predictable failures. We need to support the hydrogen doers and ignore the hydrogen talkers.