Hydrogen Steel-making

Hydrogen Steel-making

Subject – Environment

Context – Hydrogen steel-making can cut CO2 emissions: TERI study

Concept –

• The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), in a new study, suggests measures to decouple the growth of the iron and steel sector from rising carbon emissions using green hydrogen.
• Hydrogen steel-making has the potential to drastically reduce CO2 emissions from primary steel-making in India, making it one of the first major economies to industrialise without the need to ‘carbonise’.
• Currently steel production based on hydrogen is more expensive than conventional steel-making routes.

Hydrogen gas –

• Hydrogen is a colourless, odourless gas abundant in the Earth’s atmosphere and is utilised for industrial uses such as petroleum refining, aerospace applications and manufacturing of chemicals, steel, and ammonia fertilisers.
• Hydrogen is the lightest and first element on the periodic table. Since the weight of hydrogen is less than air, it rises in the atmosphere and is therefore rarely found in its pure form, H2.
• At standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen is a nontoxic, nonmetallic, odorless, tasteless, colorless, and highly combustible diatomic gas.
• Hydrogen fuel is a zero-emission fuel burned with oxygen.
• Molecular hydrogen is not available on Earth in convenient natural reservoirs. Most hydrogen on Earth is bonded to oxygen in water and to carbon in live or dead and/or fossilized biomass. It can be created by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.
• For industrial processes, hydrogen is extracted primarily through two methods, the gasification of coal or through a process called steam methane reformation (SMR).
• In SME, methane from natural gas, when heated with steam, produces carbon monoxide and hydrogen that can be used as fuel.
• However, these methods aren’t carbon-friendly, which means they cause vast emissions of greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide. The hydrogen produced from these methods is called ‘brown’ hydrogen.
• Another form of hydrogen, known as ‘blue hydrogen’ is also extracted similarly through SMR but is more carbon-friendly because it captures the carbon dioxide released and stores it, as opposed to emitting it into the atmosphere.
• According to WEC, as of 2019, “96 per cent of hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels via carbon intensive processes”. Hydrogen thus obtained is called ‘grey’ hydrogen as the process, though not as expensive as the other methods, releases a lot of carbon dioxide.
• Hydrogen can be stored physically as either a gas or a liquid.
  • Storage of hydrogen as a gas typically requires high-pressure tanks.
  • Storage of hydrogen as a liquid requires cryogenic temperatures because the boiling point of hydrogen at one atmosphere pressure is −252.8°C.
  • Hydrogen can also be stored on the surfaces of solids (by adsorption) or within solids (by absorption).
• Hydrogen is not a source of energy, like fossil fuels or renewable sources like sunlight and air, but an energy carrier, which means it has to be produced, or extracted, and stored before it can be used.

Green Hydrogen –

• Green hydrogen is produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using an electrolyzer powered by electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.
• Earlier this year, the Indian Oil Corporation Limited announced it would set up the country’s first green hydrogen plant. Reliance Energy followed, saying it would invest Rs 600 billion in building factories to produce green hydrogen among other carbon friendly technologies.