Today is Thursday, 18 July 2024.
Hydrogen Europe is responsible for one of the best regular reports about clean hydrogen production pathways. We say best, specially if your curiosity goes deeper to technical levels - show me how it works! - like here at Carbon Credit Markets / Hydrogen Markets.
Today we analyze its latest edition, with close of 100 pages.
Here are the first five clean hydrogen production pathways covered in the report:
(1) Water electrolysis, requiring electricity to split water (H2O) into oxygen (O2) and hydrogen (H2).
(2) Reforming natural gas with carbon capture.
(3) Methane splitting, via pyrolysis of natural gas.
(4) Biowaste-to-hydrogen, transforming solid or liquid biomass waste by means of gasification or pyrolysis.
(5) Non-biological waste-to-hydrogen, same as above … but feedstock would be plastic! (pages 68 to 76 of the report).
All of these pathways can produce hydrogen with a carbon intensity below 3.4 kgCO2/kgH2. And where the feedstock is either waste or biomass, the carbon footprint can even be negative resulting in net carbon removal.
The image below - taken from page 7 of the report - indicates the technological readiness level for each of these processes. It also gives an idea of the size of the global pipeline of projects for each pathway.
According to the report, clean hydrogen production costs are between 1.7 and 10.2 EUR/kg, with water electrolysis currently the most expensive pathway.
Among other promising pathways for sustainable hydrogen production, the report adds four others:
(6) solar thermochemical cycles, using the spectrum of solar radiation (!).
(7) natural hydrogen (we already posted a lot about this topic!).
(8) LPG pyrolysis, i.e. propane as the raw material for obtaining CO2-free hydrogen via catalytic pyrolysis.
(9) hydrogen as a by-product of other industrial processes.
In the report you will also find processes flowcharts, comparative technical efficiencies, physicochemical enhancements, the role of nuclear and hydraulic power, Chinese competitiveness, references to company names and links to several other sources of information, among much much more.
Click below to download it.
Or visit Hydrogen Europe website, by clicking at the image below.
To further develop this emerging hydrogen industry, what is necessary is economy of scale - with unavoidable subsidies at the beginning, similar to those existing in the oil industry - and customization to regional realities, considering the abundance or not of renewable sources of energy.
