Renewable hydrogen for the chemical industry
- PDF / 742,124 Bytes
- 16 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 39 Downloads / 203 Views
REVIEW Renewable hydrogen for the chemical industry
Nigel Rambhujun, Muhammad Saad Salman, Ting Wang, Chulaluck Pratthana, Prabal Sapkota, Mehdi Costalin, Qiwen Lai, and Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou, MERLin, School of Chemical Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia Address all correspondence to Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou at f.aguey@ unsw.edu.au (Received 19 June 2020; accepted 18 August 2020)
ABSTRACT Hydrogen is often touted as the fuel of the future, but hydrogen is already an important feedstock for the chemical industry. This review highlights current means for hydrogen production and use, and the importance of progressing R&D along key technologies and policies to drive a cost reduction in renewable hydrogen production and enable the transition of chemical manufacturing toward green hydrogen as a feedstock and fuel. The chemical industry is at the core of what is considered a modern economy. It provides commodities and important materials, e.g., fertilizers, synthetic textiles, and drug precursors, supporting economies and more broadly our needs. The chemical sector is to become the major driver for oil production by 2030 as it entirely relies on sufficient oil supply. In this respect, renewable hydrogen has an important role to play beyond its use in the transport sector. Hydrogen not only has three times the energy density of natural gas and using hydrogen as a fuel could help decarbonize the entire chemical manufacturing, but also the use of green hydrogen as an essential reactant at the basis of many chemical products could facilitate the convergence toward virtuous circles. Enabling the production of green hydrogen at cost could not only enable new opportunities but also strengthen economies through a localized production and use of hydrogen. Herein, existing technologies for the production of renewable hydrogen including biomass and water electrolysis, and methods for the effective storage of hydrogen are reviewed with an emphasis on the need for mitigation strategies to enable such a transition. Key words: chemical synthesis; circular economy; energy generation; energy storage; environment; environmentally protective; sustainability
Introduction Hydrogen in the chemical industry Hydrogen (H2) is an important component of the universe with an enormous extent of applications. However, it does not
DISCUSSION POINTS • Hydrogen is already an important feedstock supporting the chemical industry, and this makes the transition away from fossil fuels challenging. • Green hydrogen could help decarbonize the chemical industry and beyond transform the industry toward “green” products manufacturing. • What is the current status, and which technologies could support such a transition? What is the role of policy in this?
exist in free form in nature, but rather is bonded inside ubiquitous compounds such as water and hydrocarbons. As a key building block in chemical processes, a huge fraction of current hydrogen production is used in industrial processes such as the synthesis of
Data Loading...
