Environment & Energy

...is a thermodynamically degraded form of energy, overwhelmingly made by the combustion of dangerous fossil fuels.

Electrolysis itself is a terrible, expensive, and wasteful way to make hydrogen, far more expensive than the steam reforming of dangerous fossil fuels, which is also wasteful.

I posted this in another comment in this thread, but for convenience will repeat it here:



The caption:

Progress on Catalyst Development for the Steam Reforming of Biomass and Waste Plastics Pyrolysis Volatiles: A Review Laura Santamaria, Gartzen Lopez, Enara Fernandez, Maria Cortazar, Aitor Arregi, Martin Olazar, and Javier Bilbao, Energy & Fuels 2021 35 (21), 17051-17084]

I referred to this graphic, and reproduced it, discussing a paper in the journal I discussed above here: The current sources and uses of hydrogen.

About 4% of the world's hydrogen is made via electrolysis, generally as a side product of the production of chlorine, but sometimes in Potemkin systems designed to greenwash fossil fuels. You can see lots of these greenwashing Potemkin systems advertised in this forum.

Electrolysis is really only viable in situations where reliable electricity is available; it is somewhat dangerous with unreliable electricity because of diffusion in the electrolysis units leading to explosive mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen.

I discussed this here: World's largest green hydrogen project 'has major problems due to its Chinese electrolysers': BNEF