Hydrogen Production Methods : Steam Reforming, Natural Gas, Electrolysis Water, Algae
The hydrogen can come from various sources including fossil fuels, wind, solar, biomass, nuclear, solar thermo-chemical reactions, and solar photolysis.
The hydrogen industry in the United States presently produces 9 million tons of hydrogen annually. Hydrogen production is to fill the needs in oil refining, chemical industry, metal processing and electrical generation. Hydrogen industry can also fulfill about to 20-30 million hydrogen fuel cells vehicles per year. Only a small percentage of hydrogen is now used as fuel. Even though there are a big potential in hydrogen, at the moment it is being used mainly as raw materials (feedstock), intermediate chemical products, and for a specialty chemicals.
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but it is apparently not in large quantities or high concentrations on earth today. Hydrogen must be made from other compounds such as fuel fossils water, and biomass. Several hydrogen production methods have specific needs in terms of energy like for light, heating, and electricity generation.
In the United States alone, steam methane reforming take accounts for more than 95 percent of hydrogen production. This is a catalytic process that needs natural gas or hydrocarbons steams to make a mixture of carbon dioxide and hydrogen. The result of the mixture is then separated to create high purity hydrogen. This method by using steam methane is one of energy-efficient technology is now commercially available.
Another method to produce hydrogen is by processing partial oxidation of fossil fuels in large gasifies. This is the reaction of fuel with a limited amount of oxygen in an attempt to create a mixture of hydrogen, which is then cleaned and purified. The partial oxidation primary by product is carbon dioxide, but it can be applied to diverse application like natural gas, heavy oils, hydrocarbon feedstocks, coal and solid biomass.
Another method to produce hydrogen is by employing electricity to extract hydrogen from the electrolysis of water. At present this method is not consider effective and efficient. The process need combustion of fossil fuels in steam methane reforming and partial oxidation, but it would be distributed hydrogen production and create opportunities that allow the use of electricity from renewable energy sources and nuclear.
Other hydrogen production methods offer the prospects of producing hydrogen and do not emit carbon dioxide as side result. But this process is still in its early stages of development. These include watershed thermo-chemical nuclear or solar thermal, solid fossil fuel, photolytic (solar), hydrogen production and carbon sequestration, biological processes (algae and bacteria) that can produce hydrogen from hydrogen containing materials.
Hydrogen is projected to be an energy source leads. This projection will reduce American dependence on imported oil, diversifying energy sources and reducing pollution and emissions of greenhouse gases at the same time. In the future, hydrogen will be massively produced in large refinery in industrial areas, parks and plants produced in the power of communities and distributed in rural areas.
One way to increase current hydrogen production is by building it from current hydrogen industry. To distribute the initial growth markets, small reform and promote the electrolysis of hydrogen for small fleets of fuel cell vehicles offer and decentralized energy supply. When markets needs for hydrogen developed, the cost will decrease due to economies of scale and technological progress. The positive effect would be the decreasing of emissions of carbon dioxide, the strengthen the conversion methods using photolytic, renewable technologies and nuclear technologies.