A team from the University of Waterloo earned second place in the Hydrogen Education Foundation's 2018 Hydrogen Student Design Contest, which was announced during the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Annual Merit Review (AMR) in Washington, DC. This international competition included 27 teams from around the world, all working to design a Power-to-Gas system for cross market uses, including energy storage, ancillary services, and transportation fuel. The winning Waterloo team was mentored by Professor Michael Fowler and Dr. Azadeh Maroufmashat of Chemical Engineering, and included Chemical Engineering students Sami Barbouti, Ehsan Haghi, Ushnik Mukherjee, Nick Preston, Hassan Riaz, Peter Tang and Javan Wang.

From left: Azadeh Maroufmashat (mentor), Nick Preston, Ehsan Haghi, Ushnik Mukherjee

Southern California Gas, Air Liquide and Hydrogenics sponsored the Contest and announced University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, as the runner up, their sixth award in the history of the Contest. The team’s design proposed an energy hub for a southern Ontario automotive manufacturer that used renewable energy, supplemented by the provincial power grid, to generate hydrogen gas. This hydrogen would be later redistributed in the form of various revenue streams, such as hydrogen enriched natural gas, and transportation fuel for both forklifts and fuel cell vehicles. 

This is particularly important as the province of Ontario is transitioning towards a renewable, environmentally friendly energy system that is independent of progressively scarce fossil fuels. Power-to-Gas could play a key role in meeting the province’s energy management requirements by enabling the increased use of intermittent renewable sources of power. Since Power-to-Gas accesses existing natural gas infrastructure, it is capable of providing an incremental transition to a greenhouse gas (GHG) emission free hydrogen economy.

For more information about this contest and access to the full report, please visit http://www.hydrogencontest.org/2018.asp.