India has just approved a new deal to develop green hydrogen for $2.3 billion to help secure the country’s future as a provider of domestic and exported clean energy. Hydrogen is a clean energy source, but the technology required to store it under pressure can be complex and expensive, and it can be made of dirty energy source materials. The gas is currently made from unsustainable fossil fuels. Now, a new way of producing this hydrogen is promising a much cleaner energy future for India and potentially the world.
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India moves to produce clean hydrogen and cut emissions
An innovative way to produce hydrogen from biomass was just developed by a team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Science. The team was headed up by S. Dasappa, professor at the Center for Sustainable Technologies and chair of the Interdisciplinary Center for Energy Research at IISc.
Related: How can we fuel nuclear energy for a cleaner future?
The investment in developing hydrogen as an industry is a positive first step toward establishing the ability to make a minimum of five million metric tons of green hydrogen by the end of the 2020s. Green hydrogen is produced through electrolysis of water, and the process is powered by electricity generated from renewables. This is much cleaner than existing hydrogen production processes. The current process relies on something called the steam methane reforming route, which uses methane and can rely on fossil fuel-generated power.
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India is attempting to make green hydrogen affordable by investing in developing the technology to bring down its cost. This will also help India reduce its emissions and become a major exporter of clean hydrogen, according to Anurag Thakur, India’s minister for information and broadcasting. The investment also adds 125 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030. In October 2022, India had 166 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, so that would effectively double clean energy production. Doing this would reduce fossil fuel dependency and imports and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 million metric tons.
Hydrogen from biomass promises a clean energy future
Clean hydrogen from biomass is another level of game changing technology for countries looking to cut emissions. Because green hydrogen can be created from biomass instead of fossil fuels, the source materials are inherently cleaner. Everything on top of that that is sustainable, such as the source of power used to fuel the generation process, is additionally helpful to countries trying to achieve emissions reduction goals.
The process of turning biomass to hydrogen happens in two stages. In the first stage, biomass is converted into syngas (a hydrogen-rich fuel and gas mix) in a novel reactor using oxygen and steam. In the second stage, hydrogen is generated from syngas using a low-pressure gas separation unit.
This new process produces 100 grams of hydrogen from one kilogram of biomass. It’s notable that only 60 grams of hydrogen are contained in one kilogram of biomass. The steam in this process also contains hydrogen. Two carbon-based byproducts are solid carbon that can serve as a carbon sink and carbon dioxide that can be used for other products. This makes this hydrogen production process potentially carbon negative.
Creating hydrogen in this way aligns with India’s National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap, promoting the use of hydrogen as a fuel that can free the country from fossil fuel dependency. The project was supported by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India. The team also acknowledged support from the Indian Oil Corporation Limited in scaling up the technology to produce 0.25 tons of hydrogen per day for use in hydrogen-powered fuel cell buses. The technology could also be applied in the steel industry to decarbonize steel, in agriculture for green fertilizers and in any sector that uses hydrogen produced by fossil fuels.
Could clean hydrogen point the way to other sustainable fuels?
The same platform can be used for methanol and ethanol production, which opens up new possibilities for more sustainable sources of fuel production as well as helping to green the manufacturing of various household products. While the world is pushing to shift to all-electric machinery where possible, energy generation is still heavily dependent on fuels such as natural gas. Methanol and ethanol are used as fuels for vehicles and cookstoves and in production of everyday products, too. Methanol is used to make plastics, paints, car parts and construction materials. Ethanol is used to make alcoholic drinks, as a topical agent to prevent skin infections, and in lotions, cosmetics and perfumes.
As new technology comes online, it will help the world’s governments push towards emissions goals to curb climate change, while also greening manufacturing and making everyday products more sustainable. It’s a tide that lifts all ships. While we expect most governments to use these technologies to make their economies independent and competitive as exporters of clean energy and fuels, advancing technology for clean energy production will help in many ways to make our world a greener, cleaner place.
Via Tech Xplore
Lead image via Pexels
