Potential Development of Green Hydrogen(Water electrolysis hydrogen production)
Looking back at the forms of energy consumed by human beings, drilling wood for fire in ancient times, coal used in farming times, oil and natural gas used on a large scale in industrial times, the changes of these energy carriers reflect the trend of carbon reduction and hydrogenation, and the reduction of the carbon-hydrogen ratio. At present, my country's carbon peak and carbon neutral development goals will further accelerate the process of carbon reduction. As a zero-carbon energy carrier, hydrogen is getting more and more attention: in 2050, 20% of the world's CO2 emission reduction can be replaced by hydrogen energy, and hydrogen energy consumption will account for 18% of the world's energy market.
The main ways of hydrogen utilization are fuel cell mobile power, distributed power station, chemical hydrogenation, and the emerging development is hydrogen fuel steam turbine, hydrogen metallurgy, etc. The utilization of hydrogen energy needs to start from hydrogen production. Since hydrogen rarely exists in the form of elemental substances in nature, it needs to be produced through industrial processes. The sources of hydrogen are divided into industrial by-product hydrogen, fossil fuel hydrogen production, and water electrolysis hydrogen production. The difference lies in the regeneration of raw materials, CO2 emissions, and hydrogen production costs.At present, more than 95% of the hydrogen production in the world comes from the reforming of fossil fuels, and the production process inevitably emits CO2; about 4% to 5% of the hydrogen comes from electrolyzed water, and there is no CO2 emission during the production process. The hydrogen production process is divided into gray hydrogen (coal to hydrogen), blue hydrogen (natural gas hydrogen) and green hydrogen (hydrogen from water electrolysis, renewable energy) according to the carbon emission intensity. The original intention of the development of the hydrogen energy industry is zero-carbon or low-carbon emissions. Therefore, gray hydrogen and blue hydrogen will gradually be replaced by green hydrogen based on renewable energy. Green hydrogen is the future development direction of the energy industry.