Green Hydrogen: Not Too Much Hot Gas

Now, the government has announced that it will support green hydrogen in India like this 20,000 crores. This should be welcomed rather than condemned as super-feeding of fat cats.

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This is because green hydrogen is a major weapon in the war against climate change. and has the potential to reduce India’s oil imports and strengthen energy security. To appreciate this, we need to be familiar with the respectable ‘green’ for the gas that, we’ve been taught in school, is colourless, along with the wealth of hydrogen that makes it a hero on the green battlefield.

According to a US government website, 1 kg of hydrogen contains as much energy as 2.8 kg of gasoline (petrol), but of course, the hydrogen would have to be compressed at high pressure to manage the volume. When hydrogen is burned to produce energy, it combines with oxygen to produce heat and water, unlike when we burn coal, natural gas or any other hydrocarbon, the combustion of which produces global-warming carbon dioxide. it occurs. Hydrogen can replace natural gas to drive turbines to generate electricity, again with zero pollution. In a fuel cell, a catalyst can strip hydrogen atoms of their electrons, pushing the electrons out in the form of an electric current that can drive a motor. This would result in battery-charged electric cars. Batteries take time to recharge, and what’s more, their supply chains are dominated by China, and a handful of countries control the minerals from which battery-critical cobalt, nickel and lithium are refined .

Furthermore, hydrogen is important when it comes to steel and cement manufacturing in place of coal. Aluminum reducing power for extracting alumina from bauxite and refining aluminum from alumina. Using hydrogen to produce that power would largely redeem this shiny metal with a long, dark history.

Shipping and aviation are two other industries that promise to free hydrogen or its close ally, ammonia, from carbon’s grip. A technological solution to aviation’s carbon footprint would be good for the world, even if it upsets all the abstinence and self-deprecating people involved in the boycott of flight, the solution carried by green fanatics in the spirit of austerity-inducing hairshirts and Fasting before.

The colour-coding of hydrogen depends on the carbon footprint generated by the process of its production. Hydrogen produced by the steam methane reforming process – Steam and natural gas react at high temperature and pressure to break down natural gas, which is mostly methane, into hydrogen, a molecule of one atom of carbon and four atoms of hydrogen. To leave and produce carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide – called gray hydrogen. If the carbon generated in the production of gray hydrogen is captured for storage or use, the hydrogen produced is called blue hydrogen. If hydrogen is produced by electrolysis of water (splitting water into its constituent parts of hydrogen and oxygen using electricity) and the power used in the process is entirely renewable, the resulting hydrogen is called green hydrogen. goes.

Gray hydrogen is a mainstay of petroleum refineries, which use hydrogen to remove sulfur from diesel. If they follow this up with effective carbon capture for storage or better still use, this will boost hydrogen availability. Hydrogen will burn sweetly without carbon, no matter what color is added to it.

But green hydrogen could be a big boost to wind and solar power. The main drawback of such renewable energy is that they do not produce electricity continuously. When the sun doesn’t reach or the wind stops blowing, electricity production stops. To overcome this intermittent problem, proposed solutions have been pumped storage – pumping the water to a height from which it can be driven down to turn turbines when power generation stops – and large-scale Battery storage on. Green hydrogen presents a better alternative. Use renewable energy to power the electrolyzer and produce hydrogen. It can be stored and transported, thus making renewable energy available at a place and time removed from its production. This ability to give renewable energy the temporal and spatial flexibility of use makes hydrogen a valuable export commodity.

Green hydrogen is a nascent industry globally. US President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act envisages massive subsidies for America’s hydrogen industry. India can expect to be globally competitive in this green technology/fuel. R&D is the key to success, along with economies of scale and the efficiency of executing large projects. The green hydrogen allocation by the government can be mistaken for a meager outlay of a few hundred crores on R&D. Apart from this, it is a welcome and sensible initiative.

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