Jul 12, 2024 04:42 PM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companie...r-BB1pM55S
https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/..._permalink
EXCERPTS: Tony Robbins donned ear protection and stepped inside a nondescript metal building in southwestern Pennsylvania. What the celebrity motivational speaker saw was mesmerizing.
The roaring machines in front of him stood three stories tall and had the potential to create a revolutionary new energy source, he later wrote. The inventor of the equipment—and Robbins’s guide that day—was Simon Hodson, a white-haired California scientist with a background in cement and food packaging.
Hodson was using advanced technology to turn waste coal into fertilizer and other products. That was exciting enough, but Robbins had come for a visit because Hodson had told him about something even more thrilling.
The “quantum reformers” he had designed, Hodson had said, could turn coal into clean-burning hydrogen—without emitting any greenhouse gases. And that hydrogen, Hodson said, could run old coal-fired power plants, something that had never been done before.
Soon after that visit in September 2022, Robbins lent Hodson nearly $200 million to develop the potentially breakthrough technology. That amounted to the largest single wager he has ever made.
Together, the two men took over a defunct coal-fired power plant in West Virginia and set out to prove their revolutionary idea will actually work.
[...] Called Omnis, the company hasn’t publicly demonstrated that its clean-energy technology will work. Hodson said in a recent interview he is confident it will, but admits it might not. Scientists have expressed skepticism. After repeatedly pushing back the date for promised demonstrations, the company said Tuesday it planned to demonstrate the technology next week.
[...] John Eiler, a geochemistry professor at the California Institute of Technology and a member of Omnis’s advisory board, said in March that the company hadn’t yet shown that its technology can operate at high temperatures for weeks and months and whether it can efficiently scale up to operate at multiple power plants. “It’s premature to judge,” he said.
It typically takes about $5,000 to produce a ton of hydrogen without carbon emissions. Hodson said he can do it for $18.
“That number just seems impossible,” said Matteo Cargnello, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Stanford University.
In addition to producing hydrogen, Omnis’s coal-vaporization process is supposed to generate vast amounts of synthetic graphite, a key component of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles and other rechargeable devices. China dominates the synthetic graphite market, so a domestic source would be in high demand.
Omnis said the power plant will have the capacity to produce up to six million tons of it a year—about three times annual global consumption. The company hopes to run hundreds of power plants using the same technology, according to Hodson.
“If the claims being made are accurate, this facility will disrupt the world graphite market,” said Sean O’Leary, a senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, a nonprofit think tank focused on Appalachia.
Hodson said he has met Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk and that his graphite can meet the carmaker’s graphite needs. In addition, the graphite bonanza will allow for other uses, such as building furniture, roads, bridges and power lines, he said. In a September presentation to West Virginia’s Public Energy Authority, Hodson said the technology can “give rise to a complete change of society.”
Omnis has much riding on the coming demonstration. If it succeeds, said Saleri, “It will usher in a new era in energy.”
“If we are wrong,” he said later, “we will have taken enormous risks in an attempt to solve one of the world’s biggest problems, and we will have failed.” (MORE - missing details)
https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/..._permalink
EXCERPTS: Tony Robbins donned ear protection and stepped inside a nondescript metal building in southwestern Pennsylvania. What the celebrity motivational speaker saw was mesmerizing.
The roaring machines in front of him stood three stories tall and had the potential to create a revolutionary new energy source, he later wrote. The inventor of the equipment—and Robbins’s guide that day—was Simon Hodson, a white-haired California scientist with a background in cement and food packaging.
Hodson was using advanced technology to turn waste coal into fertilizer and other products. That was exciting enough, but Robbins had come for a visit because Hodson had told him about something even more thrilling.
The “quantum reformers” he had designed, Hodson had said, could turn coal into clean-burning hydrogen—without emitting any greenhouse gases. And that hydrogen, Hodson said, could run old coal-fired power plants, something that had never been done before.
Soon after that visit in September 2022, Robbins lent Hodson nearly $200 million to develop the potentially breakthrough technology. That amounted to the largest single wager he has ever made.
Together, the two men took over a defunct coal-fired power plant in West Virginia and set out to prove their revolutionary idea will actually work.
[...] Called Omnis, the company hasn’t publicly demonstrated that its clean-energy technology will work. Hodson said in a recent interview he is confident it will, but admits it might not. Scientists have expressed skepticism. After repeatedly pushing back the date for promised demonstrations, the company said Tuesday it planned to demonstrate the technology next week.
[...] John Eiler, a geochemistry professor at the California Institute of Technology and a member of Omnis’s advisory board, said in March that the company hadn’t yet shown that its technology can operate at high temperatures for weeks and months and whether it can efficiently scale up to operate at multiple power plants. “It’s premature to judge,” he said.
It typically takes about $5,000 to produce a ton of hydrogen without carbon emissions. Hodson said he can do it for $18.
“That number just seems impossible,” said Matteo Cargnello, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Stanford University.
In addition to producing hydrogen, Omnis’s coal-vaporization process is supposed to generate vast amounts of synthetic graphite, a key component of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles and other rechargeable devices. China dominates the synthetic graphite market, so a domestic source would be in high demand.
Omnis said the power plant will have the capacity to produce up to six million tons of it a year—about three times annual global consumption. The company hopes to run hundreds of power plants using the same technology, according to Hodson.
“If the claims being made are accurate, this facility will disrupt the world graphite market,” said Sean O’Leary, a senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, a nonprofit think tank focused on Appalachia.
Hodson said he has met Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk and that his graphite can meet the carmaker’s graphite needs. In addition, the graphite bonanza will allow for other uses, such as building furniture, roads, bridges and power lines, he said. In a September presentation to West Virginia’s Public Energy Authority, Hodson said the technology can “give rise to a complete change of society.”
Omnis has much riding on the coming demonstration. If it succeeds, said Saleri, “It will usher in a new era in energy.”
“If we are wrong,” he said later, “we will have taken enormous risks in an attempt to solve one of the world’s biggest problems, and we will have failed.” (MORE - missing details)