BENGALURU: The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) on Tuesday said a team of its researchers has developed an innovative technology to produce hydrogen from biomass. The team was led by S Dasappa, professor, Centre for Sustainable Technologies, and chair, Interdisciplinary Centre for Energy Research at IISc.
Pointing out that India uses nearly 50-lakh-tonne of hydrogen in different sectors and estimating the hydrogen market to grow substantially, Dasappa said: “But most of the hydrogen we currently use comes from fossil fuels through a process called steam methane reforming route. Now, we have found a way to extract green hydrogen from biomass, a renewable energy source.”
The process consists of two steps: First, biomass is converted into syngas – a hydrogen-rich fuel gas mixture – in a novel reactor using oxygen and steam. Second, pure hydrogen is generated from syngas using an indigenously developed low-pressure gas separation unit.
“Both these technologies ensure that this process is a highly efficient method of generating green hydrogen. It produces 100g of hydrogen from 1kg of biomass even though only 60g of hydrogen are present in 1kg of biomass. This is because in this process, steam, which also contains hydrogen, participates in both homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions (in homogeneous reactions, reactants are in a single phase whereas in heterogeneous reactions, the reactants are in two or more phases),” an IISc statement read.
The production of green hydrogen using this process is environmentally friendly for another reason, IISc said: It is carbon negative. “The two carbon-based by-products are solid carbon, which serves as a carbon sink, and carbon dioxide, which can be used in other value-added products,” IISc added.
The technology, Dasappa said, dovetails nicely with the National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap, an initiative of the Centre 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 and the department of science and technology (DST). “We also acknowledge the support of Indian Oil Corporation in scaling up the technology to produce 0.25 tonnes of hydrogen per day for use in hydrogen-powered fuel cell buses,” IISc said.
Dasappa believes that green hydrogen could be used in several other industries as well – in the steel industry to decarbonise steel, in agriculture to manufacture green fertilisers, and in many sectors currently using hydrogen produced from fossil fuels. “Moreover, the same platform can be used for methanol and ethanol production,” he adds.
SOURCE: TOI
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