We live in a time of energy transition. Fossil fuels come to an end due to depletion and because they damage the planet. And as long as we can’t replace them 100% with renewable energy sources such as electricity generated by wind, solar or hydro, researchers around the world are looking for alternative sources to move ships, planes, trains and cars by clean fonts. One of the most talked about is hydrogen. And among its many colors, there are those who speak of the golden hydrogen.
Hydrogen is everywhere. Is he first element from the periodic table. And it is the chemical element more abundant of the universe. According to Wikipedia, it is more than 75% matter by mass and more than 90% atoms. Come on, if we want to use hydrogen as an energy source, it will never be used up. Hence, different industrial and public actors support hydrogen as clean energy source. The problem is in obtaining the hydrogen.
Humans have long been obtaining hydrogen to use as fuel. raw materialin the manufacture of products or other materials, such as glass, as a refrigerant, in the pharmaceutical industry, in food, in different chemical industries… And, of course, as a source of energy. But not all ways to get hydrogen they are clean. Hence the colors assigned to hydrogen.
grey, green or blue hydrogen
The so-called gray hydrogen or black hydrogen is that which comes from fossil fuels. Hence it is associated with that color. It is used in refineries, in the creation of fertilizers, etc. Is usually extract from natural gas. And the consequence of obtaining hydrogen from this source is that generates carbon dioxide. The dreaded CO2 that is giving us so many headaches.
Then we have the green hydrogen. It is becoming an alternative to fossil fuels, at least in industrial sectors. The green thing comes to him is generated from water. It is extracted by a process called electrolysis. It is clean because it does not generate waste. But you need electricity to perform that electrolysis. The key is that this source of electricity is clean, that is, through wind or solar.
The call blue hydrogen it is an evolution of gray or black hydrogen. It is extracted from natural gas but, in the process, part of the carbon dioxide is captured so that it does not contaminate. It is not as green as green hydrogen, but it pollutes less than its gray brother. And if we don’t have enough colors, we can also talk about the magenta or pink hydrogen. It is the one that arises from obtaining hydrogen from water electrolysis in nuclear power plants. It is as clean as green energy, since the system does not generate waste. And, in addition, it takes advantage of a power source without interrupting your usual work.
The Golden Hydrogen of Texas
And what about the golden hydrogen? an article of Wired gives us some clues in the form of bacteria and nutrients who take care of the job. And as a workplace, holes that were once oil installations. Now they are in disuse because they have run out or it is not worth continuing to dig. And since the environmental impact is already done, a second life for this type of facility it can amortize them for the good of the planet and for the benefit of all.
Specifically, microbes process the remains of hydrocarbons. Everything that could not be extracted or used but that remains there. The result: hydrogen and CO2. But for now this process is in the testing phase. The person in charge is Cemvita Factory, a biotechnology company based in Texas, one of the US states with the most oil wells. Some of them already in disuse.
Those responsible for Cemvita Factory say that the process of obtaining golden hydrogen It is profitable, since a lot of hydrogen is obtained with little. In addition, they take advantage of already abandoned facilities, which hardly requires investment in creating specific plants to produce hydrogen. And what about the CO2 generated? The answer is that it can be kept underground, use another type of microbe to process it, and/or find commercial uses for this CO2.
The tests carried out by this company, and announced at the end of September, have given good results. But there’s still too much to do. We will see if in a few years the so-called golden hydrogen is a viable and serious alternative to generate electricity or move planes or ships using hydrogen.
The golden hydrogen of Valencia
But there are more companies and researchers working on golden hydrogen. By example, in Valencia, Spain. researchers of the Institute of Chemical Technology of the CSIC and of the polytechnic university of Valencia announced in the spring of this year that they had created a golden hydrogen generator. And his work appeared in Science. Based on proton ceramic. And that it was scalable and modular. In other words, it could be manufactured in different sizes to satisfy demands of different calibers.
Specifically, it is an “electrified reactor for obtain hydrogen in a more sustainable way and energy efficient. “36 individual ceramic membranes in a scalable, modular generator that produces hydrogen from electricity, and various fuels with a almost zero energy loss. It is the first time that this technology has been shown to make it possible to obtain hydrogen industrially”.
The note continues. “Fuel can be ammonia, natural gas, biogas or other molecules with hydrogen. The project has made it possible to scale an electrified reactor up to a production of around half a kilo of pressurized hydrogen per day by electrocompression, with a very high purity and maximum energy efficiency, above 90%”. Another advantage is that the CO2 generated is not emitted into the atmosphere. “It is transformed into a pressurized stream for liquefaction and transport for later use or storage, thus allowing decarbonization.”
The next step will be to put what has been learned into practice and scale it up to generate golden hydrogen on an industrial scale. Something that should not be very far in time, since the research team had the expert support and financial resources from energy companies like Shell, ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, Equinor, ENGIE, Saudi Aramco Y gassnova.