Green Energy! IISc Bengaluru Researchers Design Innovative Technology To Convert Biomass Into Hydrogen
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Karnataka, 14 July 2022 12:01 PM GMT
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Creatives : Shiva Chaudhary
A post-graduate in Journalism and Mass Communication with relevant skills, specialising in content editing & writing. I believe in the precise dissemination of information based on facts to the public.
The production of green hydrogen utilising the process mentioned above is environmentally friendly for another reason: carbon negative. The two carbon-based by-products are carbon dioxide and solid carbon.
A team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru has designed an innovative technology to produce hydrogen from biomass which is a renewable energy source.
The team was led by Prof S Dasappa of the Centre for Sustainable Technologies and Chair of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Energy Research at the institute.
Dasappa said on Tuesday, July 12, that India utilises around 50 lakh tonnes of hydrogen for different processes in different sectors, and the hydrogen market is likely to grow substantially in the coming years.
He said, "But most of the hydrogen we currently use comes from fossil fuels through a process called steam methane reforming route," quoted The Economic Times.
The Process Consists Of Two Steps
The team has found a way to extract hydrogen from biomass, a renewable energy source; an IISc release explained that the process comprises two steps.
In the initial step, biomass is converted into syngas (a hydrogen-rich fuel gas mixture) in a novel reactor using oxygen and steam. In the next step, pure hydrogen is generated from syngas using an indigenously developed low-pressure gas separation unit.
The release explained, "Both these technologies ensure that this process is a highly efficient method of generating green hydrogen; it produces 100 g of hydrogen from 1 kg of biomass even though only 60 g of hydrogen are present in 1 kg of biomass. This is because in this process, steam, which also contains hydrogen, participates in both homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions," quoted The Hindu.
Benefits Of Producing Hydrogen Using This Process
The production of green hydrogen utilising the process mentioned above is environmentally friendly for another reason: carbon negative. The two carbon-based by-products are carbon dioxide, which can be used in other value-added products and solid carbon, which acts as a carbon sink.
The innovative technology also dovetails with the National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap, an initiative of the Government of India (GOI) that aims to promote the use of hydrogen as a fuel and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
The project was supported by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) and the Department of Science and Technology of the GOI. The team also acknowledged the support of Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) Limited in escalating the technology to produce 0.25 tonnes of hydrogen per day for use in hydrogen-powered fuel cell buses.