Datchy Flavien Hydrogen production using solar energy

Tillet Léo
Subject: Hydrogen production using solar energy

Introduction :
The Earth has been undergoing a constant resource shock for a few decades. The renewable
resources are exhausted in May, and the non-persistent resources start to be depleted.
Many means of transportation, industry and many other industries are using or will use oil in
the near future, as the world is becoming more and more resource intensive. Speaking of oil
reserves, according to speculations we have reached the peak of oil reserves and by 2100
the reserves will be exhausted.
It was therefore necessary to find other alternatives, alternatives that will be able to use
abundant resources on earth and renewable. The two major actors of this news will be
water (+70% on Earth) and the Sun (Essential in our survival), with these two resources that
are abundant and renewable has wished researchers from Rice University, in Texas, have
developed, with the help of an artificial leaf, a system capable of transforming water and
solar energy into hydrogen. A significant advance in sustainable energy production.

Since this year we will talk about a real race to the Laboratory
In 2016, two Swiss researchers from EPFL and the Swiss Center for Electronics and
Microtechnology and one from New York University, presented "an intrinsically stable and
scalable solar water splitting device based entirely on earth-abundant materials, with a solar
energy-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of 14.2%."
That same year, a Stanford team demonstrated that water splitting by photovoltaic
electrolysis had a record efficiency of more than 30 percent, up from 24.4 percent. An open
access paper on their work was published in the journal Nature Communications. Their
system consisted of two polymer membrane electrolyzers in series with an
InGaP/GaAs/GaInNAsSb triple-junction solar cell.
The race to increase efficiency, lower costs and develop the most durable components is just
beginning.
So we will ask to ourself In what way is Hydrogen the first successor of thermal energies ?
(Introduire Blibliographie : https://decrypterlenergie.org/wp-content/uploads/6.5-
scenarios.jpg)
 In this second part, we will study the chain of production of hydrogen to then enter in the
detail of the process, as said before, we will have to use the solar energy as well as water to
feed the electrolyzer, the big plus of the hydrogen is that contrary to the electricity, it can be
stored and thus to produce of it great quantity will not be problematic.

Figure 1Schema of energy chain of production

On this diagram of NREL we can see several branches of energy import. Electricity in black,
CO2 in green and natural gas in red, but we will focus on all the elements in blue, which
speaks of hydrogen. For the sake of simplicity we will not detail the biomass pyrolysis.
We have therefore imported renewable energy Solar and hydro which will pass through our
electrolyzer (detailed on the next part), This hydrogen will be stored in a tank know that
hydrogen is the lightest gas in the universe: a liter of this gas weighs only 90 mg at
atmospheric pressure, it is therefore about 11 times lighter than the air we breathe.

It takes a volume of about 11 m3, i.e. the volume of the trunk of a large commercial vehicle,
to store just 1 kg of hydrogen, the amount needed to travel 100 km. It is therefore essential
to increase its density and thus increase the pressure in the tank. Once stored, the hydrogen
will be able to power our hydrogen vehicles or to provide the necessary energy for fuel cells
and engines.
Now that we have detailed the main scheme of the hydrogen park, we are going to look at
the production of hydrogen in detail.
Here is the diagram of the explanation of the electrolysis, for the small history the first
electrolysis of the water was realized in May 1800 by two British chemists.
 To describe the process :
The electric current
dissociates the water
molecule (H2O) into
hydroxide ions (HO-) and
hydrogen H+: in the
electrolytic cell, the hydrogen
ions accept electrons at the
cathode in an oxidation-
reduction reaction forming
gaseous dihydrogen (H2),
according to the reduction
reaction

Figure 2 Catalysis

while an oxidation of the hydroxide ions - which therefore lose electrons - occurs at the
anode to "close" the electrical circuit (charge balance of the chemical reaction) :

which gives the following electrolytic decomposition equation:

The quantity of gaseous dihydrogen produced is thus equivalent to twice the quantity of
dioxygen. According to Avogadro's law, the recovered volume of dihydrogen produced is
also twice the amount of dioxygen.
With this catalysis we saw that with some H2O, cathode and anode we can produce Oxygen
an Hydrogen.
III.
The government detailed this Tuesday the major plan that should allow France to become a
global player in hydrogen by 2030. The aim is not only to produce profitable "green"
hydrogen, but also to develop economically viable uses, particularly in mobility.

Bruno Le Maire, Minister of the Economy, and Barbara Pompili, Minister of Ecological
Transition, presented the 7 billion hydrogen plan on September.
Here we go. A few days after unveiling the broad outlines of its major hydrogen project, as
part of the recovery plan, the government presented, its vision to make this gas "the energy
of the future of France. A plan of 7.2 billion euros by 2030 (including 2 billion between 2020
and 2022), which should not only develop a production of "green" hydrogen profitable, but
also to democratize the uses, especially in heavy mobility.
"It's a huge boost, with a simple objective: to build a French low-carbon hydrogen industry of
international scope, with the aim of saving 6 million tons of CO2 emissions by 2030," said
Barbara Pompili, Minister of Ecological Transition.

Industrial champions
This new plan follows the one launched by Nicolas Hulot in 2018, of 100 million euros, which
had essentially financed small experiments on a local scale. By now betting billions of public
funds following the example of Germany and in coordination with Brussels , the government
wants to help companies move from the R&D and demonstrator stage to the industrial
stage.

"We have the companies, the industrial champions to do it," insisted the Minister of
Economy, Bruno Le Maire, citing in passing Safra (buses), Alstom and the SNCF (train),
Faurecia (tanks), Symbio (fuel cells), Air Liquide, Schlumberger or McPhy (green hydrogen
production).
The first part of the plan, the most immediate and most concrete, will be devoted to
decarbonizing hydrogen. Instead of using a molecule derived from hydrocarbons, the idea is
to produce it using decarbonized electricity (renewable and nuclear), by electrolysis of
water. This is an expensive and energy-intensive technology, and the aim is to reduce its cost
by improving it and increasing its volume: 1.5 billion euros will be spent on the manufacture
of electrolysers, for a capacity of 6.5 gigawatts.

Reducing costs
This will decarbonize the industrial uses of hydrogen (refining, fertilizers, etc.), but also
mobility, which is currently a major CO2 emitter. Tomorrow, trains, trucks, buses and even
airplanes will have to run, or fly, on hydrogen. As for the production of green hydrogen, the
technology exists but is still far from being economically viable. In particular, we need to
work on the fuel cell, which allows hydrogen to be (re)transformed into electricity, to reduce
its cost and improve its efficiency. In mobility, hydrogen will first be used in heavy vehicles

Brussels' plan to get hydrogen off the ground in Europe

Nearly one billion euros will be used between now and 2023 to develop such a heavy-duty
hydrogen mobility offer, via several calls for projects (350 million euros for demonstrators,
275 million for territorial experiments, for example). Finally, support for research and
innovation will also be boosted, with a budget of €650 million by 2023.

Counterparts
Industrialists have unanimously welcomed the effort. "For a totally new and alternative
energy like that, the most important is to prime the pump", commented Florent Ménégaux,
the boss of Michelin, one of the shareholders of Symbio. The president of the French
Association for hydrogen and fuel cells (Afhypac), Philippe Boucly, welcomed "the very
strong signal" given by the State, proclaiming his "full satisfaction".

Bruno Le Maire however does not intend to sign a blank check. "Seven billion is a lot, a lot, a
lot of money," he insisted, recalling that he expected industrialists in return "factories",
"jobs", "industrial relocation". The goal is to generate between 50,000 and 150,000 direct
and indirect jobs in France.