Hydrogen Fuel .. Future Prospects – Arab Press

Posted on: Wednesday 30 September 2020 – 9:45 PM | Last update: Wednesday 30 September 2020 – 9:45 PM

The London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat published an article by Walid Khaddoury about the current expansion in the use of hydrogen as an energy fuel and the challenges it faces due to its high-cost production as well as the environmental damage it causes … We present the following.
During its last presidency of the G20, Japan requested a study on the role of hydrogen in energy. The International Energy Agency prepared a comprehensive analytical study in 2019 on the current status of hydrogen and the potential for its development as an energy fuel, and the study concluded that hydrogen enjoys during the current stage unprecedented political and commercial support. As the policies and projects of developing it and trying to exploit it as an energy fuel around the world are spreading rapidly, and the study concluded, that the time is now right to develop technologies for exploiting hydrogen and reduce production costs to facilitate its competition with other fuels and their widespread use.
The study indicates that hydrogen supplies to factories are currently a popular commercial operation around the world, and that these supplies have increased three times since 1975, and that demand is constantly increasing. It is worth noting that the overwhelming majority of the source of supplies is fossil fuels, so that 6 One percent of the world’s gas and 2 percent of the world’s coal are used to produce hydrogen. Hence, hydrogen production is responsible for the emissions of carbon dioxide equal to the emissions of carbon dioxide in Britain and Indonesia combined.
The IEA study also indicates that there is a remarkable increase in the number of countries that support the hydrogen industry. The agency adds, that there are currently 50 goals, recommendations and policies to encourage the consumption of hydrogen or its consumption directly, most of them in the transportation sector. It is noticeable that during the past few years, global government spending on hydrogen energy research and development of its research and methods of use has increased, although this high spending is less than what governments spent in these same areas before the peak of their spending on hydrogen research in 2008.
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Hydrogen is produced, as mentioned above, from fossil fuels. As well as from organic mass (organic fuel) and water, or from the combination of the last two elements together. Natural gas is currently the main source of hydrogen production; As production of gas constitutes about three quarters of the global production of hydrogen, or about 70 million tons annually, and this in turn constitutes 6 percent of global gas production. Production from coal is second; Due to the huge reserves available to China, and thus its high consumption there, a limited amount of hydrogen is also produced from oil and electricity.
The value of hydrogen accounts for the largest part of the current hydrogen production cost. As this cost ranges between 45 and 75 percent of the total value of the cost of production, while less than 0.1 percent of hydrogen production in the current period is obtained from the electro-hydrophobic analysis, but with the expectation of lower prices for electricity produced with sustainable energies, In particular, solar energy and wind, this has increased interest in the use of hydroelectric analysis due to the lower cost of sustainable energy electricity than conventional electricity. There are already several projects that have been constructed that use hydroelectric analysis, using sustainable electrical energies and seawater. Which reduced production costs by a high percentage. It also helps at the same time to provide adequate sea water.
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What is the future of hydrogen fuel? The agency’s study indicates that with the wide global interest in hydrogen during the current stage, it is necessary to seize the opportunity to support investments in modern technologies for producing hydrogen and to research the possibility of reducing its production cost, as well as encouraging industries that depend on it, in addition to making its production environmentally friendly.
The study indicates that although hydrogen is currently used widely in the world, the fuel is still a pollutant of the environment. Hence, it should be converted into an environmentally friendly and cost-effective way. This is in order to be able to become suitable fuel for future requirements.
And the International Energy Agency has proposed a package of policies that governments or industries can implement all or some of them so that hydrogen fuel can be used as clean energy and at lower cost.
1- Governments, regions and cities must allocate a role for hydrogen in their future plans, particularly in the refining, chemicals, iron and steel industries, the shipping and long-range transportation sector, residential projects and homes, and electricity generation and storage stations.
2- Adopting policies to support research to reduce the costs of producing environmentally friendly hydrogen. This technology is currently available, but it must be supported by the necessary research to reduce production costs.
3- Unifying standard specifications and reducing unnecessary bureaucratic procedures.
4- Optimizing the current economic zones and ready-made infrastructures in order to use clean hydrogen for the environment as energy fuel.
In sum, the production of hydrogen today from fossil fuels is costly on the one hand, and harmful to the environment on the other hand. Also, the construction of specialized infrastructure for the distribution and transportation of hydrogen has proven to be an expensive and time-consuming process. Therefore, it is necessary to cooperate and coordinate with other similar sectors. For example, the construction of petrol stations in the current initial stage is very costly work; Therefore, it is proposed during the initial stages to distribute hydrogen in the current conventional fuel stations themselves, and this will require relatively low-cost adjustments compared to the construction of hydrogen-only stations.
The vast majority of hydrogen production today comes from fossil fuels. Which produces a lot of pollution. So; Either produce hydrogen from electricity produced from sustainable electric energy, or capture the carbon dioxide that is produced from it and re-inject it to the ground.