Hydrogen Production

Abstract

It is well known that hydrogen can become an important carrier and storage medium of energy in the near future and a serious medium-term alternative to fossil fuels. By means of fuel cells, hydrogen can serve as a clean fuel, i.e. without the emission of pollutant gases, for the production of electricity in which it is known as the hydrogen economy. Another main advantage of hydrogen is that is the fuel, which provides the highest amount of energy per unit weight. However, the large-scale implementation of hydrogen requires significant advances in further lowering its production costs and finding efficient techniques for its storage and transportation. At present, there is also a strong interest to couple the inherent intermittent renewable energy systems with the production of hydrogen so that the hydrogen can return the energy stored by means of a fuel cell when the primary source (solar radiation, wind, etc.) is not available. In this chapter, we make a review of the most usual techniques for hydrogen production: steam methane reforming, gasification, electrolysis, renewable energies, etc., and costs. One important result from our findings is that hydrogen produced by biomass gasification can practically compete in costs with that produced from fossil fuels. © Springer-Verlag London 2013.