Japan’s Rinnai has unveiled what it claims is the world’s first 100% hydrogen combustion technology for residential water heaters. It is currently using the hydrogen water heater in demonstration projects in Australia, prior to commercialization.

Model water heater with 100% hydrogen combustion tech

Rinnai Corp., a Japanese manufacturer of home heating appliances, has developed a new water heater powered exclusively by hydrogen.

“We have succeeded in the development of a water heater powered by hydrogen, which is sought after as a clean fuel source with zero CO2 emissions, in a way that addresses the issues of explosion risk and combustion stability,” it said, adding that the heater can be used for residential applications.

Rinnai is currently using the hydrogen water heater in demonstration projects in Australia, prior to commercialization.

“We will develop our products in countries where hydrogen will be quickly available,” the company said. “This latest breakthrough will be an absolute game-changer, both for our business and for the wider gas industry. It will mark the beginning of bringing proven household appliances that can run on 100% renewable gas to market.”

In the past, Rinnai has developed a gas water heater that can operate with 20% hydrogen or methane blending. It also recently tested tankless water heaters that can work with 30% hydrogen or methane blending, without the need for product upgrades or modifications.

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More articles from Emiliano Bellini

Where do we get the hydrogen from , are they going to give us the secret to extract it from water , in other words we get free hot water

This is great news for people employed in the gas industry

I installed a Rinnai tankless back when that was the state of the art in energy efficiency. It was a great product. But why…why on earth would they make tis pointless piece of hardware?

First off, get yourself a heatpump water heat and be done with it. As tankless tries to cut standby losses and condensing burners inch closer and closer to 100% combustion efficiency, a heatpump water heater is the equivalent of 300-400% efficiency. so.. whats the point of this?

Follow up question, how do I get hydrogen piped to my house in order to use one of these on the first place? I’ve heard people claim that the natural gas infrastructure could be repurposed for a hydrogen economy but unfortunately that is completely untrue. Hydrogen molecules are small and our existing natural gas infrastructure was not designed to prevent hydrogen from leaking out, only natural gas. Furthermore the volumetric energy capacity of hydrogen is lower than natural gas so gas would have to be piped at a higher pressure thereby further increasing the leakage through the existing infrastructure. In the end we’d have to replace the entire infrastructure before we could even safely flip the switch to start sending out hydrogen through the natural gas lines. So why wouldn’t we just move the green energy of the future through our existing electrical grid?

(Green) Hydrogen may find niche industry uses but it will never, ever, be of any value to individual home heating or commuter vehicles in light of green electricity generation and EVs. But I understand that the Japanese government is heavily subsidizing hydrogen research so I guess I can’t blame Rinnai for this, or Toyota for their failed hydrogen fool cell cars.

Most places on Earth won’t absolutely need hydrogen for energy storage and can use heat pumps to extract heat from ambient air. But the daytime high temperature last Christmas in southern Alberta was -32 C, so that’s not going to work with refrigerants that vaporize at -25 C.

And most cold days they’re running peaking plants, so all a heat pump will do, is run at a COP of barely above 1.0, from electricity that’s 0.3 efficient.

For that, no-one would remove a 0.95 efficient gas fired hot water heater.

And forget about running it on solar when you’re barely averaging 1 hour full sun equivalent per day during December.

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