“Green hydrogen empowers efficient and sustainable production of coke cans.”
A new innovation can produce green hydrogen powered by a low-cost environmentally friendly method utilizing scrap metal. Do you know that the process of producing green hydrogen without emitting greenhouse gases is simple and affordable?
Just take several coke cans, shred them into tiny metal bits, and set them in a basin of water to get started. Hydrogen is released.
However, the issue is that this process produces so little gas that it is scarcely worth the effort. This is due to the fact that the oxygen in the water quickly reacts with the aluminum surface to form an oxide layer that halts further reaction. Finding a material, or a catalyst, that can remove the oxide layer is the answer. Several researchers have used gallium for that aim. Others have demonstrated that a rather high hydrogen yield can be achieved by using a fine dust of silicon-doped aluminum, but it is an expensive metal.
Green hydrogen production from metal scrap
Under the direction of Professors RB Harikrishna, Hemagni Deka, T Sundararajan, and G Ranga Rao, researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Madras have demonstrated that scrap metal may be utilized as feedstock for the thermochemical production of green hydrogen. By splitting water at high temperatures using industrial waste-metal scrap, the gas is created. This process needs to start with a significant quantity of energy in order to reach the necessary temperature. In a recent publication in The International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, the researchers remark that the exothermic nature of the process can lead to a reduction in energy intake.
The professors investigated the reaction of steam and metal scrap to produce green hydrogen. With a conversion efficiency of over 94%, their technique produced 500 mL of green H2 for every gram of scrap material at 1150°C. They state, “this is a potential way to use scrap metals for large-scale, carbon-emission-free green hydrogen production.” About 500,000 liters of hydrogen can be produced from a ton of metal waste using this procedure. Magnetite, the principal byproduct, has the potential to be added to fluids with magneto-rheological characteristics. This can be turned into a low-cost green hydrogen production technology because it is an environmentally benign process. This method can also be applied to a variety of other scrap metal items to create green hydrogen.
Unchanging profit
A US business called Monolith, situated in Nebraska, has said that it has created a method for employing methane pyrolysis to produce inexpensive green hydrogen. Although it still consumes natural gas, it claims to emit only 0.45 kg of CO2 for every kilogram of hydrogen produced, as opposed to 11.3 kg for the traditional “steam methane reforming” method. According to Monolith, if the feedstock is from recycled or biogenic sources, there will be no carbon dioxide emissions.
The business is supported by investors such as TPR Rise Climate, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Decarbonization Partners, and Warburg Pincus.
The method is straightforward: superheat methane using electricity. The procedure uses roughly 55 kWhr of electricity per kilogram of hydrogen, or one-seventh of what an electrolyser would require. The CO2 molecule’s hydrogen and carbon atom bonds are broken by heat. You get two valuable products out of the apparatus: carbon black and hydrogen. Separately, the carbon and hydrogen atoms emerge.
From: The Hindu BusinessLine
UH2 cares about environmental sustainability by standing out at the forefront of green hydrogen solutions, exploring innovative and sustainable methods for producing hydrogen. This breakthrough represents an important milestone in the field of renewable energy, offering a greener and more efficient alternative to conventional methods.
Learn more about green hydrogen here!