this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Hydrogen production is the family of industrial methods for generating hydrogen gas. There are four main sources for the commercial production of hydrogen: natural gas, oil, coal, and electrolysis of water; which account for 48%, 30%, 18% and 4% of the world's hydrogen production respectively. Fossil fuels are the dominant source of industrial hydrogen. As of 2020, the majority of hydrogen (~95%) is produced by steam reforming of natural gas and other light hydrocarbons, partial oxidation of heavier hydrocarbons, and coal gasification. Other methods of hydrogen production include biomass gasification and methane pyrolysis. Methane pyrolysis and water electrolysis can use any source of electricity including renewable energy. The production of hydrogen plays a key role in any industrialized society, since hydrogen is required for many chemical processes. In 2020, roughly 87 million tons of hydrogen was produced worldwide for various uses, such as oil refining, in the production of ammonia through the Haber process, and in the production of methanol through reduction of carbon monoxide. The global hydrogen generation market was fairly valued at US$155 billion in 2022, and expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9.3% from 2023 to 2030.^article^ ^|^ ^about^
Ah it’s to make the actual hydrogen fuel not the fuel cells. Ty for the info.
Essentially if you combine hydrogen with oxygen, you get water. This chemical reaction happens naturally when the two are exposed to each other and produces heaps of energy which can easily be controlled and used for anything else.
One way to produce hydrogen is to take water, and heaps of energy, and "split" the water into hydrogen and oxygen. You can just release the oxygen into the air (since you'd be making too much to sell it).
The cost largely comes down to where you get your energy from. As solar gets more and more widely deployed, some countries now have more energy during the day than they can use - the price of power in those countries is not just close to zero sometimes it's negative. The grid will literally pay you to use the electricity during peak production. Since it's cheaper to provide power than shut down infrastructure that will be needed again in a few hours.
At that point, all you need to produce hydrogen is water. The power is free. And it doesn't need to be pristine water either - ocean water is fine.
Hydrogen itself is perfectly clean - it produces water or steam. The debate over wether or not it's "clean" is all about the energy used to produce it and that is changing as our electricity grid moves to zero emission power sources. One of them being hydrogen — which is a great way to fill in gaps when solar and wind aren't producing power.