It’s possible to produce hydrogen gas using many different methods and raw materials to the extent that it has potential to be the most flexible and abundant resource for creating fuel on the earth. Producing hydrogen gas in a typical factory environment starts with raw materials including algae, natural gas, water, coal, and biomass, which is made up of naturally organic composting materials.
Gasification is the technique used for producing hydrogen gas from coal, biomass, or other solid material. It involves subjecting the material or feedstock to extreme heat, cooling it, separating the hydrogen gas, and purifying it for use as automotive or electrical fuel. Production plants that gasify coal to distill hydrogen gas as a fuel for electricity generation will produce much less pollution that regular coal-fired power stations.
Producing hydrogen gas using water is one of the greenest production methods possible when the energy source can be generated from renewable energy sources like solar power or wind generators. The principle method is electrolysis which means that electric current is passed through water and an electrolyte. This separates water into its component parts of hydrogen gas and oxygen. Nuclear energy or even the earth’s own geothermal energy may also be used as an energy source for the electricity requires to make the process work.
Thermochemical Water Splitting involves producing hydrogen gas from water through a chemical reaction between water and certain chemicals at a high degree of temperature. This is basically available at nuclear plants. The difference between High-temperature Electrolysis to produce hydrogen gas and that extracted by electricity is only that in the former, the water is brought to the required temperature by heat that is generated by nuclear power production whereas in the latter, the same is done by using electric current.
Producing hydrogen gas using natural gas as the raw material is achieved through a process called Steam Methane Reformation. This is a two-step method, which burns the natural gas to create steam, which results in a synthesis gas from which the hydrogen can be separated. This method, though not as environmentally friendly as electrolysis is currently used to produce roughly ninety-five percent of all hydrogen in the United States.
By using a technique called Photo-Biological Production, hydrogen can be extracted from algae or bacteria contained in wastewater. In this method, the algae are kept from access to sulfur. This results in their emitting hydrogen instead of oxygen. This method uses waste and renewable materials as its feedstock, and is thus attracting a great deal of attention as being the “greenest” method.
When compared to fossil fuel production, producing hydrogen gas clearly provides numerous benefits going forward. The apparent abundance of hydrogen gives it a real future whereas fossil fuels have a very limited time line. No matter the exact production method used, plentiful sources of hydrogen make it clearly the fuel of the future. And it seems only a matter of time that new appliances and applications start to be produced to take advantage of this new fuel.