Green Hydrogen UPSC | Types | Uses | Making Of Green Hydrogen

Green Hydrogen UPSC | Types | Uses | Making Of Green Hydrogen : Why In The News ?

Recently, government has announced the Green Hydrogen mission where the target is to make the country self-reliance in energy by 2047.

What Is Hydrogen ?

Hydrogen is the lightest and first element on the periodic table.
Since the weight of hydrogen is less than air, it rises in the atmosphere and is therefore rarely found in its pure form, H2.
At standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen is a nontoxic, nonmetallic, odorless, tasteless, colorless, and highly combustible diatomic gas.
Hydrogen fuel is a zero-emission fuel burned with oxygen.
It can be used in fuel cells or internal combustion engines.
It is also used as a fuel for spacecraft propulsion.

Brown Hydrogen	Most of the gas that is already widely used as an industrial chemical is either brown, if it’s made through the gasification of coal or lignite
Grey Hydrogen	If it is made through steam methane reformation, which typically uses natural gas as the feedstock. Neither of these processes is exactly carbon-friendly.
Blue Hydorgen	Where the gas is produced by steam methane reformation but the emissions are curtailed using carbon capture and storage.
Green Hydrogen	Green hydrogen, in contrast, could almost eliminate emissions by using renewable energy — increasingly abundant and often generated at less-than-ideal times — to power the electrolysis of water.

It is the most abundant element in the universe.
The sun and other stars are composed largely of hydrogen.
Astronomers estimate that 90% of the atoms in the universe are hydrogen atoms.
Hydrogen is a component of more compounds than any other element.
Water is the most abundant compound of hydrogen found on earth.
Molecular hydrogen is not available on Earth in convenient natural reservoirs.
Most hydrogen on Earth is bonded to oxygen in water and to carbon in live or dead and/or fossilized biomass.
It can be created by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Hydrogen can be stored physically as either a gas or a liquid.
Storage of hydrogen as a gas typically requires high-pressure tanks.
Storage of hydrogen as a liquid requires cryogenic temperatures because the boiling point of hydrogen at one atmosphere pressure is −252.8°C.
Hydrogen can also be stored on the surfaces of solids (by adsorption) or within solids (by absorption).

Hydrogen is used in the synthesis of ammonia and the manufacture of nitrogenous fertilizers.
Hydrogenation of unsaturated vegetable oils for manufacturing vanaspati fat.
It is used in the manufacture of many organic compounds, for example, methanol.
Hydrogen chloride is a very useful chemical and is prepared from hydrogen.
Hydrogen can reduce many metal oxides to metals by metallurgical processes.
Hydrogen is used as rocket fuel in many space research activities.
Hydrogen fuel is being experimented within the automotive industry with hydrogen fuel cells.

The challenge right now is that big electrolyzers are in short supply, and plentiful supplies of renewable electricity still come at a significant
Storing and transporting the highly flammable gas is not easy; it takes up a lot of space and has a habit of making steel pipes and welds brittle and prone to failure.
The bulk transport of hydrogen will require dedicated pipelines, which would be costly to build, pressurizing the gas, or cooling it to a liquid.
High Cost: In a report published last year (using data from 2018), the International Energy Agency put the cost of green hydrogen at $3 to $7.50 per kilo, compared to $0.90 to $3.20 for production using steam methane reformation.
Loss of Efficiency in every process: Electrolyzer efficiencies range from around 60 percent to 80 percent, according to Shell. The efficiency challenge is exacerbated by the fact that many applications may require green hydrogen to power a fuel cell, leading to further losses.

Green hydrogen currently accounts for less than 1 percent of total annual hydrogen production.
The pipeline of green hydrogen electrolyzer projects nearly tripled in the five months leading up to April 2020, to 8.2 gigawatts.

India was focusing on producing blue and green hydrogen along with blended hydrogen in Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) for various purposes, including transport.
Through technological advancements, India is blending hydrogen with compressed natural gas for use as transportation fuel as well as an industrial input to refineries.
50 buses in Delhi are plying on blended hydrogen in Compressed Natural Gas on a pilot basis.
The Indian Oil Corporation Limited announced it would set up the country’s first green hydrogen Plant .
Reliance Energy said that it would invest Rs 600 billion in building factories to produce green hydrogen among other carbon friendly technologies.