Hydrogen Workforce Needs

Photo credit: David Blekhman

Yesterday I gave an invited presentation on liquid hydrogen in aviation spotlighting some of the organizations and individuals at the forefront of hydrogen aircraft flight testing, engine development, and airport operations. This will also be the topic of a longer discussion and Q&A for the December 3rd Mission Hydrogen webinar.

The presentation slides along with supplemental content and hyperlinks to more details are available in the "Aviation" briefing at https://h2sage.com. Free registration for the Mission Hydrogen webinar is available here: https://mission-hydrogen.com.

Hydrogen Workforce Needs

The event held on November 18th at the Ohio Aerospace Institute (OAI) was a second in-person gathering supporting the DOE project on hydrogen workforce needs led by the University of Toledo (UToledo). Andrew Gyekenyesi of OAI and Mark Mason of UToledo kicked off the event setting the stage for the project context, progress, and key insights. Regional survey results were then presented by Kevin Cranick of Workforce Intelligence Network.

Some themes that continued to be built upon as the day progressed included:

• Creating the right balance of workforce training and upskilling building on foundational community college and university curricula and supplementing with hydrogen specific knowledge depending on the needs of specific job roles.
• Credentialing programs, short courses, trades upskilling, and other shorter training opportunities to provide key skills quickly and tailored to various industry sectors and applications.
• The need to create a pipeline of education and awareness programs in secondary (high schools) and perhaps earlier, as well as activities that provide broader public awareness directly or indirectly to parents and other local community members.

Industry Perspectives

My aviation presentation was part of the industry portion of the event to provide examples of how hydrogen systems are being developed, deployed, and operated. Mark Haberbusch of NEOEx Systems described some of their new systems that liquefy hydrogen (electrolytically produced from microgrid renewables or from other sources), and refuel long range drones with liquid hydrogen.

David Perzynski followed with a portfolio of initiatives under development at Honda for hydrogen vehicles, engines, and other applications. Nick Vargo of Babcock & Wilcox finished up the industry portion with a description of their chemical looping technology for producing low-carbon hydrogen from various hydrocarbon feedstocks using engineered FeO particles.

Education and Training Perspectives

The afternoon session started with a presentation by Pat Hufnagel-Smith of Creative Links summarizing some findings from her work on building a resilient energy workforce amid uncertainty. Later presenters confirmed that her publication on this topic is the best available and a gold standard.

Anil Bika of the University of Delaware presented information on some of the hydrogen initiatives, electrochemical engineering program, high school programs, and key industry collaborations at the Center for Clean Hydrogen. The importance of building an ecosystem of diverse stakeholders was evident.

David Blekhman of California State University, LA followed with highlights of the impressive array of projects, sustainable energy curricula, fueling stations, hands-on internships, and industry collaborations he has developed over many years as Technical Director of the Hydrogen Research and Fueling Facility.

Tiffany Howard of South Louisiana Community College provided a thought provoking final presentation on community college strategies and tactics during times of economic stagnation drawing on her experiences in a variety of roles and insights from previous technology trends in driverless trucking and broadband communications.

Panel Discussions and Networking

Sujata Shetty of UToledo led a panel discussion amongst the afternoon presenters that included audience thoughts and insights. Although it covered a great deal of themes, a few takeaways from memory:

• Supplemental and complementary training and curricula related to hydrogen that can build upon foundational certifications and degrees may be the best approach (i.e., rather than specific "hydrogen" degrees)
• Uncertainty in public policy, economic, and other factors requires developing adaptable and robust training and upskilling options
• Attracting, training, and retaining an emerging and skilled hydrogen workforce requires addressing multiple worker needs including aspirations for meaningful work, career stability, personal growth, and quality of life.

In addition to the scheduled talks and presenters, I enjoyed catching up with existing colleagues along with some new and inspiring contacts across the economic development, industry associations, and other key actors in the hydrogen and sustainable energy ecosystem. 

Bill Whittenberger and Linda Buckosh of the Ohio Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Consortium continue to advocate for hydrogen-related businesses to various stakeholders within the state and well beyond. Keri Zipay of TeamNEO and Jing Lyon (past interim CEO at Brite Energy) are economic development champions who help make critical connections and assist new businesses in the region.

An unexpected bonus was meeting Veronica Vaca of Cobra Industrial Activities who is focused on geologic hydrogen (both naturally occurring and stimulated by selected fluid injection). This is a topic that is rapidly gaining interest from investors and industry, and has the potential to significantly lower hydrogen supply costs for various use cases.

Author Bio

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 first-of-a-kind gas, slush, and liquid hydrogen systems since the mid-1980s. Matt was also the Sector Manager for Energy & Materials in his final position at NASA where he worked for 31 years. He's been a cofounder in seven technology-based startups; and provided R&D, engineering, and innovation consulting to several hundred organizations. Matt has three patents and more than 50 publications including his online Cryogenic Fluid Management guide and Decarbonizing Mobility with Liquid Hydrogen SAE report. He has created and taught liquid hydrogen courses, webinars, and workshops to global audiences.

Hydrogen Hubs, Training, and Standards

Source: https://www.energy.gov/oced/regional-clean-hydrogen-hubs-selections-award-negotiations

Hubs

The above map shows the seven US hydrogen hub awardees announced on Oct 13th along with the proposed hydrogen facility locations. Total public and private investment in this initiative is nearly $50 billion USD.

Approximately two-thirds of that investment will be for hydrogen production via renewables and water electrolysis. The remaining investment will be in methods that use various hydrocarbons as feedstocks and capture any resulting carbon byproducts for utilization and/or storage.

There is a vociferous (and legitimate) debate about the appropriate balance among these approaches for hydrogen production. Each method has perceived advantages and disadvantages in terms of infrastructure scaling, cost reductions, and greenhouse gas impacts. As the hydrogen hubs evolve, more data will become available to assess this balance. We'll take a look at this topic in more depth in a subsequent post.

For this post, I'd like to focus on two areas where critical gaps exist relevant to the roll out of these new hydrogen hubs: training and standards. There is an urgent need for accessible knowledge and relevant workforce skills, particularly for liquid hydrogen (LH2) systems design and operations.

Training

Experience with compressed gas hydrogen systems has grown significantly over the past several years as it has been tested and deployed in many new applications across a variety of industry sectors. The same is not true for liquid hydrogen. This is a critical issue since many of the hydrogen hubs (if not all of them) will be liquefying, storing, and/or transporting LH2.

Cryogenic liquid hydrogen know-how has historically been highly concentrated among a relatively small number of individuals and organizations. Most of this knowledge is not in the public domain, and what is available is not easily identifiable or accessible to those without LH2 experience.

I've attempted to address this knowledge transfer gap using a variety of methods and venues that are available to anyone on my Training webpage. Specific LH2 resources include (blue highlights are clickable links):

• Workshops and courses taught at various public conferences and internally for organizations. A full set of the workshop slides is available online at no cost.
• Webinar sessions every month that address key topics related to the design, development, and operation of integrated LH2 systems. The sessions are available for 24 hours free viewing on the first Thursday of every month.
• LH2 library of past webinar videos and downloadable slides available with a one-year subscription or as a single session rental. This is the only resource that has a nominal fee to help defray the cost of the Vimeo platform and other free resources that have been generated with no funding support.
• Bonus videos of key topics for getting started on the LH2 learning curve available for viewing any time at no cost.
• Cryogenic Fluid Management report freely accessible online or available in paperback version from Amazon. This is the first report in a planned series that addresses engineering analysis, modeling, and system development and design.
• GitHub public repository of open source cryogenic system analysis algorithms in Python and fully documented using Jupyter notebooks.
• Excel VBA short course notes for engineering analysis and modeling with examples of LH2 system applications. A discussion of open source software tools for this purpose is also provided.

In addition to these training resources, I've also created some additional channels to provide insight into topics and news relevant to liquid hydrogen:

• Global weekly news coverage of LH2 systems being deployed across all industry sectors. Also included are market projections, new research and development, key announcements, engineering details, and other related topics.
• LH2 Era blog containing posts on entrepreneurship and innovation; integration and implementation; strategy and public policy; systems and modeling; training and speaking; and other topics
• Global LH2 systems group on LinkedIn that is open to anyone to join, post, and comment on all things related to liquid hydrogen. This group also serves as a venue for continuous Q&A related to the monthly webinar sessions or any other LH2 relevant questions or issues.

While these resources only scratch the surface of what's needed for LH2 knowledge transfer and workforce training, my hope is that it provides a good starting place. Please consider using any of the above and contributing content based on your own experiences and knowledge where appropriate.

Standards

Another area where critical and urgent gaps exist relate to the development of new LH2 standards. There are a great deal of legacy standards that have been developed over the past six decades in the space and defense sector. Other important legacy standards have been developed by various industry and professional organizations over many years.

However, new applications in a variety of industry sectors and regions are driving the development of new standards. These new standards are unfortunately lagging far behind the actual design, build, and deployment of these systems in many cases. There is a need for tools that provide visibility and access to legacy standards and guidelines; integrate standards across multiple industries and organizations; and provide insight into new standards under development.

Such tools would be invaluable to LH2 system developers and standards developers alike. But it's a very difficult challenge to tackle with conventional methods. Fortunately, some new colleagues have introduced me to the potential for another approach: generative artificial intelligence (GenAI).

By curating a selected data set of the appropriate standards, and then training a dedicated GenAI with experts in LH2 systems, it is possible to create a powerful standards-based tool available to users in months instead of years. Not to replace standards, but to accelerate and enhance their development while also giving guidance to users before new or updated standards are released.

I'm currently exploring this possibility with experts in the GenAI field, with plans to reach out to other colleagues working on the relevant LH2 standards. The goal is to be able to ask an LH2 AI tool questions about a specific system under development and get detailed guidance on the standards (and their specific content) to follow for compliance and safe operations. Stay tuned...

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 leads the monthly LH2 Era™ Webinar.

Liquid Hydrogen (LH2) Workshop Slides

LH2 Workshop Slides

At the Energy & Mobility conference last week I gave a talk that was awarded best paper and co-taught a full-day workshop on liquid hydrogen (LH2) systems. My workshop slides can be viewed here.

Also moderated a panel session on hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) that included representatives from Boeing, GE Aerospace, NASA, and Aero Mobility. An overview of the panelists and topics discussed can be found here.

A number of interesting topics, questions, and themes related to liquid hydrogen emerged throughout the conference. This post highlights a couple of them.

Misleading Metrics for Boil-off and Liquefaction

There are two commonly misused metrics that came up in several questions and conversations: boil-off per day and liquefaction energy loss. Unfortunately, these metrics are often asserted to be some fixed value that supposedly applies to all liquid hydrogen systems. The truth is both of these metrics are meaningless unless they are tied to a specific system and concept of operation.

In the case of LH2 boil-off losses, properly designed systems can be as low as zero or as high as several percent per day depending on the scale, insulation system, operations, cryogenic fluid management, system requirements, and other parameters. For example, the new 1.25 million usable gallon (4700 cubic meter) LH2 dewar tank at NASA Kennedy Space Center has a passive boil-off rate of less than 0.05% per day which can be reduced to zero with the integrated cryo-refrigeration option.

Liquefaction energy losses are another example of misleading metrics. Various sources place it at 20 to 30% of the energy content of hydrogen. Similar to boil-off rates, the actual value depends on the liquefaction processes used, concept of operation, use of the LH2 cooling capacity, lifecycle energy inputs, and other parameters. To illustrate, consider a system where liquefaction is accomplished by bubbling gaseous hydrogen into the bottom of a liquid hydrogen dewar. There is no electrical energy input for this isolated process, so what is the liquefaction energy loss?

Infrastructure and Microgrids

An interesting theme that came up throughout the conference is the potential synergies possible with microgrids and hydrogen infrastructure. The capability to produce, liquefy, and use hydrogen all in one location with a dedicated renewable energy microgrid is a major paradigm shift compared to legacy fuels. And it eliminates transportation and distribution along with the associated costs and losses.

This scenario has been ignored in many recent authoritative reports as I've lamented in a previous post. Fortunately, a recently published study is shedding light on the advantages of such an approach. Hopefully, new analyses will continue to build on this insight while also tackling the inaccurate boil-off and liquefaction energy loss assumptions addressed above.

Effective trade studies require appropriate assumptions that reflect real-world state-of-the-art systems. With a lifecycle treatment of the entire end-to-end architecture and operations we will get a much clearer understanding of how liquid hydrogen systems can be implemented to build out the necessary infrastructure.

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 leads the monthly LH2 Era™ Webinar.

LH2 Era™ Library, Workshops, and Courses

LH2 Era™ Library

LH2 Era™ library has been launched to provide videos, slides, and other materials. Library content comes from webinar sessions, workshops, courses, and other sources relevant to the topic of liquid hydrogen (LH2) systems.

The new library uses the Vimeo platform for content delivery on a wide range of devices. Fifteen bonus videos from a NASA workshop on cryogenic fluid management are currently being included under the subscription option. Check it out HERE.

Workshops and Courses

Several public workshops and courses on LH2 are being offered in conjunction with various upcoming conferences. Details on the venue, duration, topics, and registration can be found HERE.

Workshops customized to your organization's needs and delivered remotely are also available. Various durations from two to eight hours are currently being offered as a promotion for sponsoring the webinar series. For more information, visit HERE.

Free Content

The monthly LH2 Era™ webinar series can still be viewed at no cost during one of the live broadcasts. Details and a link to register for free are available HERE.

Short video previews of all the slides from each webinar session are also accessible at no cost. These are hosted on the YouTube platform along with a collection of other free LH2 related videos on the topics of hydrogen myths, systems development, safety, energy storage, and more. Browse some of the free material HERE.

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  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 leads the monthly LH2 Era™ Webinar.

Upcoming LH2 Workshops, Courses, Interviews, and Webinars

There are a number of upcoming liquid hydrogen (LH2) events I'll be involved in over the next several months. Here is a rundown for those who may be interested in watching or participating.

ThinkTech Hawaii Interview: Hydrogen Myths vs Facts

Mitch Ewan, Hydrogen Program Manager at the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute (HNEI), will be interviewing me for this online broadcast. Common myths about hydrogen will be dispelled with facts on the topics of safety, readiness level, leaks, materials, green hydrogen, energy storage, and system losses. The livestream will be on May 25, 2023 at 4pm - 5pm HST at: https://thinktechhawaii.com/.

For those who aren't able to watch the broadcast live, the video is available here: https://youtu.be/vBWHhycEaIY. This is my second interview with Mitch and ThinkTech Hawaii. A recording of the first interview from 2019 can be found here: https://blog.matthewemoran.com/2019/06/thinktech-hawaii-interviews-matt-moran.html

Cryogenic Engineering Conference

This conference is being held July 9-13, 2023 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. I may be chairing a session, but mostly going to hear about the latest cryogenic advancements and connect with colleagues. Historically, some of the published papers from this annual conference become seminal references in the field. The conference website is here: https://www.cec-icmc.org/2023/

A description of the conference: "The Cryogenic Engineering Conference (CEC) focuses on the science and engineering required for cryogenic applications. Examples of topics in past conferences include liquefied gases for fuels, space applications of cryogenic liquids, cooling and performance of superconducting magnet systems in medical, transportation, power, and basic research applications, as well as the systems, machinery, control technology and thermodynamics required to produce low temperatures."

Energy & Mobility Conference & Expo

This conference is being held Sep 12-15, 2023 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. I'm teaching a full day workshop on liquid hydrogen systems at this event with my colleague Wesley Johnson of NASA. Information and registration for the workshop can be found here: https://www.energyandmobility.org/schedule/workshops/liquid-hydrogen-lh2-systems/

A description of the conference: "...a multi-industry international conference focused on energy and modern mobility, with an emphasis on advanced technologies, the challenges of systems integration, autonomy, and related product value chains and business models. All are critical factors enabling the transition to a robust, decentralized and resilient energy sector, the security of our critical infrastructure, and the evolution of mobility via advanced controls and alternative fuels, including Hydrogen, towards energy-efficient, cost-effective and sustainable solutions."

Flying HY ("The World's Largest Hydrogen Aviation Event")

This event is being held October 10-11, 2023 in Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA. I'll be teaching a half day hydrogen aviation course along with Danielle McLean, Founder & CEO of HYSKY. More information can be found here: https://www.hysky.org/news-events

Danielle and I are also tentatively planning to teach a full day version of the course at the Transformative Vertical Flight meeting February 6–8, 2024 in Santa Clara, California, USA. More details will be coming later this year. The meeting website is: https://vtol.org/tvf2024

LH2 Era™ Monthly Webinar Series

This online global webinar series focused on liquid hydrogen systems (and broadcast on the first Thursday of every month) continues with a zero boil-off case study session on June 1, 2023. The following month's session on July 6, 2023 will address the topic of liquid hydrogen integrated into grid, microgrid, and other multi-function architectures and system of systems applications.

The guest speakers for these next two sessions will be Norbert Palenstijn of Leybold USA Inc; and Dr. Ngalula Sandrine Mubenga, Assistant Professor at the University of Toledo, and Founder & President of STEM DRC Initiative. More information and free registration for this webinar series can be found at: https://sites.google.com/view/matthewemoran/training

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  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 leads the monthly LH2 Era™ Webinar.

Hydrogen Evolution: LH2 Era™ Webinar Series May 2023 Session

Our first webinar session last month (April 2023) was well attended. We had participants from 19 countries, 37 industry sectors, 71 organizations, and with 67 different job titles. Demographics from the April session can be viewed here:

https://sites.google.com/view/matthewemoran/training#h.3xask3ombjkb

Videos and slides from the April session can also be accessed at the above link up until the next session starts on May 4th. Sponsors have access at any time during their subscription to videos, slides, and Q&A recordings from all of the sessions.

The topic for next session is the evolution of liquid hydrogen technologies and systems. A summary of the subtopics is shown in the above graphic.

If you registered for the previous session you should have already received a calendar invite and link to connect for the May session (unless you cancelled your registration). New participants can register here for free:

https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/d201b7f1-6ab0-4802-a867-e0ad8365655c@f66c9c14-6534-4f5a-91d6-dc6ee3d0cfaf

Based on feedback from the previous session, making a few changes to improve the audience experience and engagement:

• Captioning for the presentation and guest interview
• Larger slide visuals and less "talking heads"
• Chat enabled throughout the session
• Option to raise hand and be unmuted for questions during Q&A

The anonymous Q&A option and cameras disabled feature will remain for those who prefer to stay in semi-stealth mode. Hope to see more people and more countries represented at the next webinar session!

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  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 leads the monthly LH2 Era™ Webinar.

UPDATE: Feedback Request on Cryogenic Fluid Management Report

I'm planning to write version 2 of this report to make it more accessible for readers with non-space applications (e.g., aviation, energy, transportation, marine, industrial, import/export, etc.). After reading it for free online or in paperback format, the following actions would be immensely helpful in preparing the next version:

1. Write a customer review on Amazon (if you read the online format of the report please indicate that in the review)
2. Email specific feedback on what you would like to see in version 2 that would be most helpful to your application(s) to: info@moraninnovation.com. Also, please note your Amazon review "name" so I can pair your inputs.

As a token of appreciation for anyone who takes the time and effort to complete 1 and 2 above, I'll email the full current pdf version as an attachment for your personal use. And if you purchased the paperback, will also provide a $10 USD rebate.

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

ORIGINAL POST:

My previous posts contained video clips of the NASA workshop short course I taught last year on this topic. All of these videos, an online version of the report, and a public GitHub repository of related interactive Python code and Jupyter notebooks are all available for free online. Links to these resources can be found at www.moraninnovation.com.

For those who would like a paperback version of the report, I've re-published it on Amazon for sale in all of its global markets. Whether you decide to purchase it, or simply use the online version for free, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. Feedback on topics of interest to include in subsequent reports in this series would be particularly appreciated. Here is a link: https://a.co/d/an7K0rd.

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 first-of-a-kind 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 cofounder in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to hundreds of organizations. Matt has three patents and more than 50 publications including the Cryogenic Fluid Management report series. He also leads the LH2 Era™ Webinar Series. More about Matt can be found on his LinkedIn page.

6.0 Other Topics in Cryogenic Fluid Management

This is the final post of video clips from the short course on cryogenic fluid management (CFM) I taught at NASA's Thermal and Fluid Analysis Workshop in September, 2022. The reference report used to present the course topics can be accessed on the Training page at www.moraninnovation.com.

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 first-of-a-kind 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 cofounder in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to hundreds of organizations. Matt has three patents and more than 50 publications including the Cryogenic Fluid Management report series. More about him can be found here.

5.0 Pressure Control in Cryogenic Systems

This post is a continuation of previous video clips from the short course on cryogenic fluid management (CFM) I taught at NASA's Thermal and Fluid Analysis Workshop in September, 2022. The reference report used to present the course topics can be accessed on the Training page at www.moraninnovation.com.

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 first-of-a-kind 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 cofounder in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to hundreds of organizations. Matt has three patents and more than 50 publications including the Cryogenic Fluid Management report series. More about him can be found here.

4.0 Venting of Cryogens

This post is a continuation of previous video clips from the short course on cryogenic fluid management (CFM) I taught at NASA's Thermal and Fluid Analysis Workshop in September, 2022. The reference report used to present the course topics can be accessed on the Training page at www.moraninnovation.com.

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 first-of-a-kind 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 cofounder in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to hundreds of organizations. Matt has three patents and more than 50 publications including the Cryogenic Fluid Management report series. More about him can be found here.

3.0 Cryogenic Tankage

This post is a continuation of previous video clips from the short course on cryogenic fluid management (CFM) I taught at NASA's Thermal and Fluid Analysis Workshop in September, 2022. The reference report used to present the course topics can be accessed on the Training page at www.moraninnovation.com.

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 first-of-a-kind 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 cofounder in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to hundreds of organizations. Matt has three patents and more than 50 publications including the Cryogenic Fluid Management report series. More about him can be found here.

2.0 Environments for Cryogenic Fluid Management

This post is a continuation of previous posts of video clips from the short course on cryogenic fluid management (CFM) I taught at NASA's Thermal and Fluid Analysis Workshop in September, 2022. The reference report used to present the course topics can be accessed on the Training page at www.moraninnovation.com.

Although this section on environments is tailored for the aerospace audience of the NASA short course, the approach can be applied to other applications with appropriate modifications. For example, stationary liquid hydrogen energy storage would need to address local transient solar flux (including day/night cycles), temperature, weather, and seasonal fluctuations (all in normal gravity). Likewise, mobile applications would have thermal and acceleration environments based on the the vehicle (e.g., aircraft, marine, train, truck, etc.) and associated operations.

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 first-of-a-kind 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 cofounder in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to hundreds of organizations. Matt has three patents and more than 50 publications including the Cryogenic Fluid Management report series. More about him can be found here.

Calculations for Introduction to Cryogenic Fluid Management

My previous post provided introductory video clips from the short course on cryogenic fluid management (CFM) I taught at NASA's Thermal and Fluid Analysis Workshop in September, 2022. The reference report used to present the course topics can be accessed on the Training page at www.moraninnovation.com.

The final section in the Introduction chapter contains example calculations to demonstrate how to use the tools and equations presented in the previous sections. As an additional resource, I've created a Jupyter notebook containing Python code with the key calculations and example exercises. It is available under a permissive open source license in my public GitHub repository at: https://github.com/moranmatthewe/CryoFM

I've attempted to include sufficient descriptive information and graphics to make the notebook useful as a standalone tool. The Python coding is intentionally straightforward to facilitate interpretation and make it easy to translate to other coding languages of interest to the user (e.g., VBA, C/C++, Matlab, Fortran, etc.).

If you have Python and JupyterLab on your computer, the Introduction notebook and CryoFM™ functions library can be downloaded and used locally (subject to the Apache 2.0 license). If you don't have these applications loaded but would like to try them out, I suggest using the Anaconda distribution to set up your computer with these and other useful programming tools.

Alternatively, if you prefer not to load these programs onto your local machine (or are prohibited by your IT department from doing so), an interactive web browser instance can be invoked using Binder that requires no downloads nor software installation. To try this method, simply look at the readme file on my GitHub repository and click on the "launch binder" icon (see screenshot below).

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 first-of-a-kind 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 cofounder in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to hundreds of organizations. Matt has three patents and more than 50 publications including the Cryogenic Fluid Management report series. More about him can be found here.

1.0 Introduction to Cryogenic Fluid Management (CFM)

In September of 2022 I taught a short course on cryogenic fluid management (CFM) at NASA's Thermal and Fluid Analysis Workshop. The course covered analysis and design of liquid hydrogen systems as well as other cryogenic fluids used in power and propulsion applications.

Although the target audience was aerospace engineers and scientists, most of the topics are directly applicable to liquid hydrogen systems in general (e.g., energy, transportation, marine, etc.). As such, the course content can be used as a resource for the development of any liquid hydrogen system.

This first video is a short introduction. Subsequent videos posted over the coming weeks will cover the other topics presented during the course. My hope is that these edited clips will be easier to digest - and later revisit as needed - rather than posting the full ~3 hour video.

The reference report used to present the course topics can be accessed on the Training page at www.moraninnovation.com. Any feedback on this material, or future topics of interest, are appreciated and can be emailed to: info@moraninnovation.com.

The example calculations for these topics are discussed in the next post.

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 first-of-a-kind 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 cofounder in seven technology based start-ups; and provided R&D and engineering support to hundreds of organizations. Matt has three patents and more than 50 publications including the Cryogenic Fluid Management report series. More about him can be found here.

Wright-Patterson AFB Hosts Thermal System Modeling Course

Matt Moran, Managing Partner at Isotherm Energy, taught his two day course on thermal system modeling at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) on Sep 11-12, 2017. Civilian and military engineers involved in spacecraft thermal control attended the course.

Below is a screeenshot from one of the many application examples presented to demonstrate how to use the techniques taught in the course. This model was created for a USAF solar orbit transfer vehicle concept for boosting satellites into higher orbit to extend their useful life. A solar concentrator is used to drive a Thermoacoustic Stirling Heat Engine (TASHE) based on DOE technology, which in turn powers a two stage pulse tube cryocooler based on NIST technology. The cryocooler, along with other advanced thermal management techniques, maintains the hydrogen propellant in cryogenic liquid condition. When the SOTV attaches to the spacecraft being boosted, the solar concentrator is articulated to be used for its secondary function - heating the hydrogen as it passes through a nozzle for propulsion. The TASHE and integrated cryocooler were designed, built and successfully tested based in part on the results from this model.

Another example application was a cryogenic system design tool originally created for the Missile Defense Agency for a space-based laser concept (see screenshot below). This model performs engineering trades and optimization based on: orbital sink temperatures, insulation configuration, fluid type, operating temperatures and pressures, tank material and structures, tank geometry, and active cooling options. The versatility of the model allowed its continued use for a variety of other projects.

In addition to aerospace applications, Isotherm Energy has leveraged its experience with power and propulsion systems to address emerging energy sector challenges. Many of the capabilities shown in the above models have direct application in sustainable energy systems, such as: solar concentrators, heat engines, combined heat & power, and energy storage (e.g. hydrogen, compressed air, liquid air, liquid nitrogen, 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…