Liquid Hydrogen Presentation (Center for Hydrogen Safety U.S. Conference 2020)

Above are the slides (click on image), and below is the video (part 1) of my presentation at the Center for Hydrogen Safety U.S. Conference 2020. The second video (part 2) is additional content that couldn't fit into the conference time slot.

Matt Moran is the Managing Member at Moran Innovation, and previous Managing Partner at Isotherm Energy. He's been developing power and propulsion systems since 1982. Matt was also the Sector Manager for Energy & Materials in his last position at NASA where he worked for 31 years. He's been involved in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to many industrial, government and research organizations.  More about Matt here…

AIAA Propulsion and Energy Forum

On August 24th I was on a Forum 360 panel about "Sustaining Mission Possibilities Through Enabling Technologies" at the virtual AIAA Propulsion and Energy conference. Above is a video clip of my opening remarks.

Matt Moran is the Managing Member at Moran Innovation, and previous Managing Partner at Isotherm Energy. He's been developing power and propulsion systems since 1982. Matt was also the Sector Manager for Energy & Materials in his last position at NASA where he worked for 31 years. He's been involved in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to many industrial, government and research organizations.  More about Matt here…

Engineering Analysis and Modeling

Excel VBA

Back in 2007, I put together a 3-day training course on engineering analysis and modeling using Excel and its built-in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). During the next ten years, taught the course at over a dozen organizations to hundreds of participants. After receiving emails from people who wanted to learn the material but weren't able to attend the courses, published paperback and kindle versions of the course notes that sold several hundred units on Amazon.

Decided to quit teaching it in 2017 due to other commitments, along with the increased availability of open source tools that provide a good alternative in some cases. However, continued to get inquiries about Excel VBA, particularly from engineers and scientists who are constrained by organizational IT departments that don't permit downloading of open source software. Also, Excel remains a ubiquitous and familiar presence in most organizations making it a first choice tool for many.

Stopped publishing the notes awhile ago, so they are no longer available on Amazon. However, since there still seems to be interest in Excel VBA for engineering analysis and modeling, have decided to make the course notes available online for self-study. See my website for more details. 

Open Source Tools

Open source tools represent another option to consider beyond Excel for engineers and scientists. The availability of highly functional and well documented open source software tools has exploded over the past decade. Many of them have a large community of users who share their experiences and offer solutions to specific use cases. Finding the answer to a complex problem often requires little more than an internet search to see who has already solved something similar.

A few examples for general engineering calculations, analysis and modeling include:

• Scilab for numerical computation
• Octave programming language (with Matlab compatibility)
• C/C++, Fortran, and other open source compilers, libraries, etc.
• Python language and the myriad of supporting platforms and tools

Python

Personally, I've been migrating toward Python for my own analysis and modeling. This open source programming language has become popular in many technical fields (e.g. artificial intelligence, big data, robotics, etc.).  As a result, the supporting community is very large and intimately familiar with the kinds of technical solutions engineers and scientists are tackling.

Below are a few supporting tools and platforms that I've found particularly valuable to use in conjunction with Python and its many available packages.

• Anaconda: Sets up your Python environment seamlessly and packages multiple ready to use free tools (e.g. JupyterLab, Qt Console, Spyder, VS Code).
• Jupyter Notebook: This environment allows you to create a dynamic python (or other supported language) notebook including full markdown capabilities to document everything.
• xlWings: Python tool for Excel allowing creation of macros and other capabilities
• Cython: Translates Python into C code for compilation, faster execution, etc.

Matt Moran is the Managing Member at Moran Innovation, and previous Managing Partner at Isotherm Energy. He's been developing power and propulsion systems since 1982. Matt was also the Sector Manager for Energy & Materials in his last position at NASA where he worked for 31 years. He's been involved in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to many industrial, government and research organizations.  More about Matt here…

ThinkTech Hawaii interviews Matt Moran

Hydrogen Endgame: The Infinity Fuel for a Sustainable Future

Matt Moran is the Managing Member at Moran Innovation, and previous Managing Partner at Isotherm Energy. He's been developing power and propulsion systems since 1982. Matt was also the Sector Manager for Energy & Materials in his last position at NASA where he worked for 31 years. He's been involved in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to many industrial, government and research organizations.  More about Matt here…

Space Sector Growing

Isotherm Energy recently completed aerospace consulting contracts for several customers. The projects involved systems engineering and design review support related to spacecraft fluid and propulsion systems.

NASA Lunar Gateway spacecaft concept (source: NASA)

The global space economy is currently valued at about $350 billion USD, and has been growing at 6-8% CAGR for the past decade. Projected annual growth rate is expected to continue at about the same clip (7%). [1]

While government and communications have predominantly driven past growth, new markets such as commercial human spaceflight are expected to play an expanded role going forward. Demand for experienced engineering support will also grow as a result.

[1] Source: SpaceNews, 2018

Matt Moran is the Managing Member at Moran Innovation, and previous Managing Partner at Isotherm Energy. He's been developing power and propulsion systems since 1982. Matt was also the Sector Manager for Energy & Materials in his last position at NASA where he worked for 31 years. He's been involved in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to many industrial, government and research organizations.  More about Matt here…

No-Loss Liquid Hydrogen and LNG Systems (Zero Boil-Off)

Last December, we completed the analysis and design of an integrated cryogenic refrigeration system for the new 1.25 million gallon liquid hydrogen dewar at NASA Kennedy Space Center. The system enables zero boil-off long term storage for an electrical cost that is a fraction of the expense of replenishing hydrogen normally lost to venting. It also provides liquefaction and subcooling in support offloading, conditioning, transfer, and other critical operations.

Liquid Hydrogen Dewar at NASA Kennedy Space Center (source: NASA); and Isotherm Energy design process

The capability to economically eliminate boil-off gas at such a large scale is a game changer for many liquefied natural gas (LNG), liquid hydrogen and other cryogen applications.  Benefits include elimination of storage losses, improved system performance, increased safety, and mitigation of unwanted emissions. However,  a systematic approach is required to insure an optimal solution. This post provides an overview of the process we use at Isotherm Energy.

Needs, Goals and Objectives

The first step is establishing the why (needs), the what (goals), and the how (objectives) for the system. There's a common tendency to overlook this step and dive into a point design based on past projects or preconceived configurations. The result generally ranges from suboptimal at best, to infeasible at worst.

Questions to ask at this point include:

1. Why is this system or capability needed? What is the overarching problem being solved?
2. What addresses the identified needs? Performance, cost, efficiency, compliance, or other goals?
3. How do we achieve the stated goals? Specific system objectives to be meet?

It's imperative that the documented answers to these questions are formally agreed upon by the key stakeholders. There must be a clear understanding of the needs,  goals and objectives at the start of the project. They form the compass that keeps the development process pointed in the right direction. A simple example to illustrate from the NASA hydrogen dewar project:

• Need: Mitigation of hydrogen losses in a new 1.25 million gallon dewar
• Goal: Long term storage with zero boil-off operation for 30 years or more
• Objective: No-loss integrated refrigeration and storage system design

Top Level Requirements and Concept of Operation

With the needs, goals and objectives identified, top level system requirements can be defined. These top level requirements will provide the basis for lower level requirements, and must be verifiable (e.g. by analysis, test, inspection, or some other method). They must also be upwardly traceable to the objectives, and flow down to lower level requirements. Requirement definition and analysis is generally an iterative process, but the top level requirements should document the primary system drivers that often come from the key stakeholders as "non-negotiable". Without this step in the process, there is no definitive measure to assess whether the system solution is acceptable.

An equally important step is drafting a system concept of operation. What are the nominal operations for the system? What are the key duty cycles and time frames over which the operations occur? What off-nominal operations are anticipated for maintenance, repair, etc.? By thinking through the specifics of these and other operational questions, the range of feasible solutions begins to come into focus. Bypassing this important step can lead to over-designed or under-designed solutions that become more costly to correct later in the development cycle.

A simple example of one top level requirement and a brief concept of operations summary:

• Requirement: The system shall be capable of removing 3000 W of thermal energy from the dewar continuously at 20 K. Rationale: Cooling capacity must be sufficient to overcome environmental heat leak and thermodynamic conditioning heat loads. Verification: by analysis and test.
• Concept of Operation: During nominal operations, the refrigeration system maintains tank pressure without venting. For tanker off-loads, roadable tankers fill the large stationary dewar while the refrigeration system conditions the hydrogen to maintain tank pressure without venting. When rapid depressurization is needed, the refrigeration system cooling flow is reversed to provide maximum cooling in the ullage for liquefaction. During fueling operations, the refrigeration system is in bypass mode. After fueling (post launch), the refrigeration system may be used to re-liquefy hydrogen vapor and depressurize the dewar.

System Trades and Analysis

The next step is to identify system design options that are within the feasible trade space, and then analyze critical performance and economic parameters. There are many possible trades to consider, but the primary ones from a thermal performance standpoint can be broadly grouped as passive, hybrid, active, or some combination thereof. Note that many options may fit into more than one of these categories depending on the implementation.

Passive techniques minimizing heat treat transfer into the system through structures, insulation, and penetrations are always important to explore first. These methods rely on good cryogenic design and material selection, and do not need any power input. Depending on the requirements and concept of operation timelines, an optimized passive thermal design may be sufficient to develop a no-loss system within the operational parameters of the application.

The hybrid category often relies on driving pressure differentials or power input for pumps, mixers and valves to provide cooling. The Joule-Thomson effect can be used in single stream cooling lines, or augmented with a heat exchanger and pump for cryogen flow on the warm side. Thermal de-stratification with any method that induces circulation of the liquid cryogen can prolong storage times by bringing the tank to equilibrium conditions (and avoiding venting). Manipulation of the boundary temperature can significantly reduce the effective environmental heat leak. This can be accomplished using a thermodynamic vent system during cryogen use, or by storing or flowing a complementary higher temperature cryogen in a jacket around the tank.

Finally, active cooling techniques require significant input power to make use of cryogenic refrigeration or cryocoolers to intercept or extract heat from the system. These refrigerators must interface with some form of heat exchanger, and perform in an integrated dynamic fashion for all required operations. These systems can also be used to subcool (densify) the cryogen for increased storage density and thermal capacity. The result is much longer storage times since significant environmental heat leak is absorbed before the cryogen reaches saturation conditions.

Design and Development

Based on the system trades and analysis performed in the previous step, each feasible design trade is ranked based upon key quantitative and qualitative criteria. Ranking methods and criteria selection should be established by consensus with the stakeholders prior to comparing design trades. This helps avoid the temptation to tweak the process in real time which can result in selection bias.

The highest ranked trade that meets all the requirements can then be selected for detailed system analysis and design. It's important during this step to document key assumptions, system interfaces, boundaries conditions, analysis approach, parametrics, optimizations, detailed results, etc. This step may require more than one iteration, or selection of the next highest ranked design trade, if the initially selected trade doesn't result in an acceptable solution.

When the design is deemed satisfactory, verification and testing is performed to validate that all the requirements are are met by the system. The project scope dictates the details of the verification and validation effort (e.g. verification of all analysis results; component and subsystem testing; and integrated system testing). The subsequent final design and system specification provides the information required to build, install and operate the system.

Optimal No-Loss Liquid Hydrogen and LNG Systems

Of course, this brief overview doesn't address all of the detailed considerations and customization needed for a specific liquid hydrogen or LNG application. However, following the overall approach helps to insure that the needs, goals and objectives are addressed in a systematic way that meets the requirements and is consistent with the concept of operation.

Furthermore, exploring the feasible trade space - and selecting the best design within it - also mitigates the risk of a sub-optimal design. Such an approach is key to economically minimizing or eliminating boil-off losses for  cryogenic systems.

Matt Moran is the Managing Member at Moran Innovation, and previous Managing Partner at Isotherm Energy. He's been developing power and propulsion systems since 1982. Matt was also the Sector Manager for Energy & Materials in his last position at NASA where he worked for 31 years. He's been involved in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to many industrial, government and research organizations.  More about Matt here…

Creative Destruction with Hydrogen

You've probably seen something similar to the beginning phrases in the mission statement below, but few would acknowledge what follows after the "...". And yet they often accurately describe the actual behavior at many organizations of all types, sizes, market sector, and geographic location. There's a pervasive tendency to smother creativity and ignore emerging trends as any organization evolves. Legacy rules and processes replace logical problem solving; parochial groupthink crowds out new data and opportunities; personal risk avoidance overrides bold leadership.

There's an antidote for this malady that management pioneer Peter Drucker made into the title of one of his books in 1985: innovation and entrepreneurship. It can be applied anywhere, but requires the right conditions to thrive. And there is a sometimes maddeningly stochastic quality to its successful implementation that correlates to a variety of factors that are only apparent in hindsight. Most importantly, it must be nurtured more than managed, which may be one reason for its ethereal nature in modern organizations.

Much has been written on this topic by far more qualified sources, but there are two aspects of innovation and entrepreneurship that are core precepts to our vision at Isotherm Energy:

1. The entrepreneurial opportunity for an innovation to flourish can take decades to incubate; and then suddenly explode when some combination of technological, cultural, public policy, and other parameters change to unlock its potential in the marketplace. These changes are sometimes subtle - and often appear unrelated in isolation - but together create a tipping point that fuels the creative destruction mechanism that Joseph Schumpeter articulated in 1942.
2. The seeds of the most disruptive innovations often come from another industry, sector, or other field of endeavor. Needs, goals and objectives from disparate domains necessarily drive creativity in different directions. This results in significant advancements that can be virtually invisible outside their domain, especially in sectors that are highly siloed. Then at some point, the previously unseen is suddenly seen, and an entrepreneurial perspective connects the dots to unleash the innovation in its new market.

Examples of these two forces at work can be found in the technological history that underpins the current sustainable energy industry. Wind harnessing machines, for example, date back to at least the time of ancient Greece (ignoring sails that reach even further back into antiquity). But their use for electricity wasn't possible until the invention of the electric generator. One of the first wind turbines for this use was built circa 1887 by Charles Brush in Cleveland, Ohio with a 12 kW "dynamo" (see photo below).  NASA was enlisted to improve the technology during the energy crisis (1974 to mid-eighties); and advances in aerodynamics, materials, tribology, structures, manufacturing, and a host of other improvements from multiple domains were applied. Public policy and new business models for the capex and opex of wind turbine installations were also critical enablers for their rapid growth in the energy sector. The elapsed time from initial electric generating demonstration to full energy market adoption: 130 years and counting.

As another example, the photoelectric effect was observed and studied throughout the 1800s, and finally explained by Einstein on a quantum basis in 1905. The initial significant use of photovoltaics was in the space program based on advances in solar cells at Bell Labs (the research arm of a telephone company) in the 1950s. A photo of the Telstar satellite launched in 1962 with solar cells for power generation is shown below. Spacecraft remained the largest user of solar cells until the aforementioned energy crisis pushed the technology into the energy sector in the mid-1970s. Over the following decades, R&D from many fields and disciplines continued to improve the performance, and expand the embodiments, of solar cells. New materials, deposition methods, junctions, manufacturing, assembly, and a host of other advances brought the technology to its current state of the art. The elapsed time from first significant commercial use in space to full energy market adoption in the energy sector: 67 years and counting.

A final example is the history of battery technology. Benjamin Franklin was purported to have coined the term "battery" referring to a set of capacitors he used with his experiments on electricity circa 1749. It was Alessandro Volta, however, who invented the electrochemical battery that most modern versions trace their earliest lineage to, and published the results in 1791. Various chemistries have been subsequently developed with improved performance along multiple parameters. Thomas Edison developed and strongly advocated batteries as the primary power plant for automobiles (see photo below from 1913), but lost out to the internal combustion engine in the marketplace. NASA and the aerospace industry used batteries for a variety of functions in power systems, including the storage of energy during the sunlit portion of an orbit for use during the shaded portion of the orbit. Battery improvements have continued in far ranging domains of applications and research, culminating in the dominant lithium-ion chemistry currently being scaled to vehicle and energy storage applications. The elapsed time from first significant commercial demonstration as the primary power source in a car to full market adoption: over 100 years and counting.

Hydrogen energy storage is following a similar historical trajectory. First discovered as a discrete substance by Henry Cavendish in the late 1700s, hydrogen has followed a circuitous path of discovery and application in a variety of fields. It's primary large scale commercial use was in the petroleum and chemical industry where it's still a critical element of fossil fuel upgrading processes. Various other industrial processes - including applications as wide ranging as food preparation and semiconductors - use hydrogen. Although it's been demonstrated in nearly every type of internal combustion engine as a replacement for fossil fuels, it's primary use for power and propulsion has been in the aerospace industry. The Atlas-Centaur was the first rocket to store liquid hydrogen in its upper stage (see its launch of Surveyor 1 in 1966 below); and the Apollo program also used hydrogen fuel cells to provide power, heat and water. Use of ever larger quantities of liquid hydrogen by NASA continued with the Saturn upper stages (Apollo) and the Space Shuttle; and a new record breaking liquid hydrogen storage system is being designed for the Space Launch System currently under development.

We at Isotherm Energy have been part of this hydrogen history in the aerospace and defense sector for more than three decades, and now believe the global marketplace is at the cusp of a critically important transition to a hydrogen energy storage architecture. Like wind turbines, solar cells, and batteries; hydrogen technology has been incubating for decades in many domains. Particularly in aerospace and defense, hydrogen systems have demonstrated technological advancements that are not well known in other market sectors. Emerging megatrends in the energy market, worldwide public policy, geopolitical shifts, climate change, and diminishing potable water supplies are quickly driving the energy sector to the tipping point for hydrogen energy storage.

In upcoming posts, I'll be delving deeper into specific aerospace-derived hydrogen system technologies most relevant to the energy sector, along with the economic business case for market adoption. But ultimately, the greatest challenges will be addressing those unspoken mission statements from the beginning of this post. Disruptive innovation, and radical shifts in the sources of revenue, always challenge the status quo and those most vested in it. Only a bold entrepreneurial perspective can unleash the creative destruction potential of hydrogen energy storage.


Matt Moran is the Managing Member at Moran Innovation, and previous Managing Partner at Isotherm Energy. He's been developing power and propulsion systems since 1982. Matt was also the Sector Manager for Energy & Materials in his last position at NASA where he worked for 31 years. He's been involved in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to many industrial, government and research organizations.  More about Matt here…