In the wake of rocketing oil and gas prices triggered by conflict in the Middle East, off-grid households are reliant on short-term government support. But what about long-term security?
A new system which allows the safe production of hydrogen gas on-demand is being heralded as a global energy breakthrough by the company responsible, Abu Dhabi-based Kinetic7. According to its own claims, the process removes any need to capture and store hydrogen in gaseous form, which can pose significant risks and comes with high costs attached.
Originally conceived as a replacement for portable cooking stoves which could be deployed in humanitarian crises, the Tribe and Nomad stoves are set to arriver on store shelves this year. Both run on battery and solar power, and the designs have now been adapted for the HODbox, an on-demand hydrogen system that is aimed at catering and hospitality users. Meanwhile, a second iteration is also set to go on sale, targeting domestic customers, with further prototypes on the cards for industrial and business sectors.
The plug and play technology can easily be attached to the side of a home, where it will produce clean gas that can be used to replace ore expensive fossil fuel products offered by LPG, heating oil and mains gas suppliers. Not only is the end product cheaper, but the cost of upstream infrastructure and installation is also brought down significantly compared with alternative options. Based on current estimates, Kinetic7 believes this could cut domestic energy bills by between 30 and 45% annually, and save huge amounts of carbon emissions by cleaning up off-grid supplies.
‘The current energy crisis has highlighted once again how vulnerable the UK and European energy supplies are and the steps that need to be taken to ensure long term energy security is preserved at all costs,’ said Rick Parish, Kinetic7 Chairman and Founder. ‘We have become far too reliant on legacy gas providers oil and LPG suppliers who control the supply and price of energy. The cost of energy has also risen steeply over the last few years amidst market volatility and geopolitical instability.’
‘When we were innovating Kinetic 7, we asked ourselves what if we didn’t need to store hydrogen gas but instead could create it on demand,’ he added. ‘Today we have managed to harness the method of creating, producing and delivering hydrogen gas safely, on demand, without the need for storage. This circumnavigates the process of storing hydrogen gas and means that our Kinetic 7 gas is 100% safe and can be created as and when it is needed and most importantly it’s 100% carbon free.’
Image: Kinetic7
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