With nations rolling out their green future initiatives and strategies aiming at increasing the use of cleaner and renewable sources of energy, hydrogen fuel is now the talk of the town. Several nations have begun taking a serious approach towards replacing the traditional sources of energy- oil and gas, with renewable energy. While some nations are looking at green hydrogen as their fuel of choice for the future, they are forced to consider blue hydrogen, pink hydrogen, or grey hydrogen as the option for immediate future due to technical and economic reasons.
Authors:
Divyanshu Jindal is a Doctoral student at O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India.
Summary:
The likes of Japan, South Korea, Australia, Norway, Germany, EU, France, Spain, Chile, Canada, Russia, and now India, have rolled out their hydrogen strategies in the last 4 years. Russia is expected to lead the blue hydrogen market in coming years. With Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s optimistic towards India-Russia cooperation’s potential to bring stability in global energy market, can hydrogen become an avenue for rejuvenation of ties between the two nations?
The likes of Japan, South Korea, Australia, Norway, Germany, EU, France, Spain, Chile, Canada, Russia, and now India, have rolled out their hydrogen strategies in the last 4 years. Russia is expected to lead the blue hydrogen market in coming years. With Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s optimistic towards India-Russia cooperation’s potential to bring stability in global energy market, can hydrogen become an avenue for rejuvenation of ties between the two nations?
Why Hydrogen?
Hydrogen is an emerging option for an energy dense fuel with zero carbon dioxide emissions. It can be produced through several ways ranging from use of biomass waste, fossil fuels, nuclear material, and completely renewable solar and wind energy. To produce hydrogen fuel, water is split into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis process (using electrolysers), which need electricity.
When the needed electricity comes from completely renewable sources like solar and wind, the generated hydrogen is termed as green. If it is generated from fossil fuels like coal and oil, it is termed as brown/grey hydrogen. In case the released carbon dioxide is captured through carbon sequestration processes, the output is blue hydrogen. Further, in case of use of nuclear energy for electrolysis process, the term used is pink hydrogen. When biomass or plastics are used for electricity generation to split water and produce hydrogen fuel, it is termed as white hydrogen.
Hydrogen can be stored in several ways, ranging from cryo-compressed which stores the gaseous form of hydrogen, to cryogenic vessels that stores liquid hydrogen. As high-density hydrogen storage poses a challenge for transportation applications, hydrogen fuel till now has been used in either large volume systems like rockets, or stationary applications like industries. For utilising hydrogen, fuel cells act as the mechanism which are fed hydrogen and oxygen from the outside, resulting in chemical reaction for energy output. While the use of fuel cells has been in place since 1960s in space projects like the Soviet lunar program, recent technology innovations have led to the development of new materials that can create such fuel cells to be used in smaller vehicles like cars and trucks.
It needs to be noted that there remain several limitations at present when it comes to an expansion in hydrogen use. While fuel cell expansion is constrained by the expensive platinum used in fuel cell batteries, forms like blue hydrogen are facing criticism for its inability to be a cleaner fuel in absence of effective carbon capturing techniques, as then blue hydrogen may end up producing more carbon in process of generation of hydrogen fuel, then it will avoid while being utilised in its application. However, the world is looking at increasing capacity first for the usage of hydrogen, and then turning towards a completely renewable and clean form of green hydrogen.
Published in: Eurasiareview
To read the full article, please click here
