Green Hydrogen - All You Need to Know (Basics)

Happy Weekend to you!

What better than to start with a thought for the day – “Sustainability is here to stay, or we may not be”

Keeping the sustainability theme in mind, I thought it would be only relevant to discuss Green Hydrogen this week. Especially now that Jindal Stainless Ltd (JSL) inaugurated India’s first commercial-scale Green Hydrogen Plant in the stainless-steel sector (and the world’s first Green Hydrogen plant with rooftop and floating solar) earlier this week. Key highlights:

• The facility has been set up by JSL in collaboration with Hygenco. It will be owned and operated by Hygenco for 20 years after which ownership and operations will be transferred to JSL.

• The facility will have an initial production of 78 tonnes per year of Green Hydrogen and aims to reduce carbon emissions by around 2,700 metric tonnes per annum (i.e., 54,000 tonnes of CO2 emission over 20 years).

• According to the company, its demand for pure hydrogen for annealing is around 353 tonnes per year, of which almost 72 tonnes per year is designed to be met through this green hydrogen facility.

This got me thinking – what is green hydrogen? Does it come in other colours? No, I’m not going shopping, and some of you probably know all about Green H2 and are thinking – “can we just skip to the part where you tell us about the companies that will be impacted?”. Well, you can scroll to the end for a nice chart on company mapping, but for the rest of you – we’ll start with the basics.

What is Green Hydrogen?

Before jumping to Green Hydrogen, let’s get our Hydrogen basics right. Hydrogen (H2) is a colourless, odourless, and highly combustible gas which is liquid below -253°C. However, H2 causes metals to fatigue and therefore leaks in a metal tank.

Woah! How do we store H2 then? – metallic tanks are sometimes used, however, tanks that can withstand high pressures have a non-metallic inner liner made of composite materials and are encased in an outer wrapping made of carbon fibre and other interwoven thermoplastic polymers. (H2, being a very low-density gas, must be stored at very high pressures of ~300-700 bar).

What makes Hydrogen Green? Didn’t you say colourless before?

Yes, hydrogen is a colourless gas, the first on the periodic table, the most common element in the universe, yet on Earth it rarely occurs in its pure form (that’s why it isn’t one of the “natural gases”). Instead, it is integrated into other materials such as water, fossil fuels and minerals. Releasing it from those forms requires energy, which is where the hydrogen colour coding comes into play.

The colour codes denote the source from which hydrogen is produced and the method employed to extract it. The colour spectrum chart is summarised below for quick reference.

A Quick Brief on the Green Hydrogen Production Process

Green Hydrogen is produced from water through the electrolysis process. The process involves passing a strong electrical current (from renewable sources like solar or wind energy) through purified water in an electrolyser.

Since the electrolyser is powered using renewable sources of electricity, and the only by-product of the process is oxygen, the process releases no greenhouse gases, making it a sustainable and environmentally friendly means of hydrogen production.

What are the applications of Green Hydrogen?

While Green Hydrogen can have several applications, its top uses comprise:

• Fuel for transportation

• Electricity generation for households

• Industrial use

• Hydrogen fuel cells to power electronic devices and electric vehicles

What are the advantages of using Green Hydrogen? 😊

• It is an environmentally friendly form of energy.

• Hydrogen is abundant and its supply is virtually limitless.

• It can be used where it is produced or transported elsewhere.

• It can be stored for long periods of time – green hydrogen production can use the excess wind energy on a windy day and can later be converted into electricity when required (unlike batteries that are unable to store large quantities of electricity for long periods of time).

• It has higher efficiency – H2 contains ~3x more energy than fossil fuels, so less of it is needed for the same amount of work.

• It makes the production process ‘clean’ for steel, concrete, fertilizers.

• As a fuel, it has higher payload capacity and higher energy density than batteries.

What about the drawbacks? ☹

• Expensive to produce – but as renewable energy prices fall and electrolysers become cheaper and more efficient, it is expected to become increasingly common.

• Highly flammable – however, it is also very light (compared to other gases) and can quickly disperse into the atmosphere.

• Difficult to transport since it must be compressed at very high pressure and requires specially designed storage tanks since it causes metal to fatigue.

Now, there’s a lot of details to dive into – such as regulations, government benefits, all about electrolysers, storage, availability, processes, the entire science of it, etc. But after already reading so much, the technical details would probably be too much right now.

Anyway, here comes the interesting part –

Which companies could be the beneficiaries of Green Hydrogen?

The universe of companies may be understood by considering the different parts of the value chain:

That’s quite the list of companies already working on Green Hydrogen, don’t you think? Anyway, it’s also been quite the read (and write) already so far. I’m up for a chat on this, probably over a cup of coffee (although honestly, I think I just keep finding excuses to have more coffee).

Till then, toodles and have a good day!

3 Weekend Recommendations by Yours Truly –

Exercise!!!

I know that some of you feel too lazy to work out, so this week’s recommendations are movements you can perform while lying down, and these will help strengthen your core!

• Crunches

• Sit-ups

• Dead bugs

Read a Book – Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg (this is particularly a women’s day theme recommendation, and you can see my thoughts on the book in the image below)

Go for an Event – Flamingo Boat Safari at Airoli (yes that’s a photo clicked by me)

Hope you have a great weekend! Until next time 😊