Hydrogen: Can it save our planet?

By Ishita Nadipalli Year 9 With the rising demand for clean energy due to climate change, people are searching for a new fuel that can be sustainably produced and burnt without polluting. Hydrogen amounts to 75% of matter in the universe and when produced correctly, it can be used as a versatile energy source with the only byproduct being water. This could stop the production of the biggest contributor to climate change: greenhouse gases. But how does it work and how effective will it be? Hydrogen poses a unique challenge when compared to fossil fuels which can simply be dug from the ground: it must be separated from another molecule before it can be of any use. Thankfully, there are many ways of doing this and these methods are categorised using colours. Most hydrogen produced nowadays is grey hydrogen which uses natural gas and releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but if you use carbon capture to bury the carbon dioxide underground it is classified as blue. Grey hydrogen is produced by reacting methane with steam, using nickel as a catalyst. Other methods are dark green, pink and turquoise but ideally, most of it would be produced sustainably using electrolysis to split the hydrogen molecules from water and create green hydrogen, which makes up only 1% of hydrogen produced. Electrolysis works by using two electrodes separated by a thin membrane called PEM. At the positive anode, a current is sent through the water to split it into oxygen and positively charged hydrogen ions with the electrons flowing through an external circuit. The hydrogen ions pass through the membrane to the negative cathode, leaving the oxygen at the anode and joining with the electrons in the external circuit to form pure hydrogen. While it is not perfect, the technology being used for these processes are ever-advancing. This rainbow of hydrogen extraction methods is very promising because if hydrogen is truly the key to powering our future, we will need as much of it as possible. Due to its simplicity, there are infinite uses for this clean fuel and it can be an effective substitute for other energy sources which are currently polluting our atmosphere. For example, the heating and hobs in your household which are probably fueled by natural gases can easily be replaced by burning hydrogen instead. Adapting power stations to run on hydrogen is not a significant problem either as they will not need much modification and since the technology is very similar to the engines of a plane, it is not unlikely that the abundant atmospheric gas could fuel journeys across the world. However, burning hydrogen is not the only way to obtain energy: it can also be converted into electricity using fuel cells. This versatility is unique to hydrogen and broadens all the possibilities for its usage. It can replace batteries and also has an advantage over them

as fuel cells last far longer. Fuel cells are a growing market especially sought after by data centres as a backup power supply, with an estimated two-thirds of data centres expected to have fuel cells by 2050. They also provide a way of decarbonising the transport industry, with hydrogen cars already available to purchase in the UK. 1kg of hydrogen can keep a car running for up to 100km, impressive considering how new the technology is. The applications for hydrogen are endless and there is no doubt that it will soon become a large part of the energy industry. Given its potential, how soon will we see hydrogen used on a larger scale? The National Grid is taking steps to test and incorporate hydrogen into its network due to their pledge to go net-zero by 2050. Its engineers are building a testing facility called FutureGrid to understand how hydrogen will work with their current system, and it has already been confirmed that it can be transported through their pipelines, reducing the time and money required to reconstruct a compatible system. Furthermore, Linde Engineering in Germany has developed technology which allows them to separate hydrogen from natural gas and they even built the world’s first full scale power plant for hydrogen extraction. President Biden’s infrastructure bill also dedicates $9.5 billion to clean hydrogen research and a large section of it will also go to carbon capture and building power systems. The concept of hydrogen energy is quickly gaining traction and developments are happening all over the world to speed up the process of incorporating it into our infrastructure. Despite consisting of only a proton and an electron, hydrogen provides hope for the world and a way of fixing the most pressing dilemma that our planet has been presented with yet. It is an opportunity that couldn’t come too soon and is one of many methods to help make up for the decades of neglect of Earth. Once the production process is finetuned and the necessary tests have been carried out, hydrogen will be able to spread through the energy system and allow us to consume power with less fear of the environmental impact and less dependence on the non-renewable fuels which helped cause this problem.

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