Hydrogen could be harvested from thin air in the desert

Scientists have produced hydrogen from thin air, a development they say could help industry harvest the promising eco-fuel in the most arid environments.

Hydrogen is being put forward as a replacement for ‘fossil fuels’ in situations where electricity may be unsuitable, namely shipping, air transport, and industries such as steel production.

While proposals for creating pure hydrogen from renewable electricity via electrolysis seem attractive to those trying to ‘decarbonize’ the economy, the transition still needs water (a compound of hydrogen and oxygen) which can be scarce where solar electricity is abundant.

To avoid taking water from an already strained local supply, a team led by Gang Kevin Li, senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, Australia, has built a system which extracts water from airborne vapor using a hygroscopic electrolyte, in this case sulfuric acid. The approach then uses solar-generated electricity to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The team proved it could operate at a relative humidity of about four percent, well below that of most deserts. On a warm sunny day, the meter-square unit was able to produce 3.7m3 of hydrogen.

“Hydrogen is the ultimate clean energy,” the paper, published in Nature Communications, said. “Despite being the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen exists on the earth mainly in compounds like water. H2 produced by water electrolysis using ‘renewable’ energy, namely, green hydrogen, represents the most promising energy carrier of the ‘low-carbon economy’.

H2 can also be used as a medium of energy storage for intermittent energies such as solar, wind, and tidal.”

The researchers pointed out that more than a third of the earth’s land surface is arid or semi-arid, supporting 20 percent of the world’s population, where freshwater is extremely difficult to access for daily life, let alone electrolysis. Pollution, industrial consumption, and global warming have added to water stress, they said.

Government and climate campaigners have proposed hydrogen as an alternative to ‘fossil fuels’, but the vast majority of industrial hydrogen is still extracted from natural gas [PDF] in a process that releases ‘greenhouse gasses’ and requires energy, which often comes from ‘carbon fuels’. Only 1 percent of US hydrogen comes from electrolysis [PDF].

Li has argued that the team’s technology could easily scale and complement existing electrolysis systems, which have their own problems. The complexity of current system designs create high capital costs for hydrogen electrolysis, although lower cost alternatives have been proposed.

Investment in green hydrogen has had a fillip in recent years. In the US, a $9.5 billion investment is part of president Joe Biden’s $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

The UK launched its hydrogen strategy in August 2021, claiming production could be worth £13 billion ($14.8 billion) to the economy by 2050.

The EU hydrogen strategy was adopted in July 2020, creating the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance. Over in Germany, hydrogen fuel cell passenger trains have now gone into operation.

But it is not just hydrogen researchers hope to pluck from thin air. Last month, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) reported a technique which promises the extraction of hydrocarbon fuels too.

See more here theregister

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Comments (6)

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    T. C. Clark

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    Why? Water in the desert is needed for consumption. Oceans are near many deserts in the Mideast. Problem with H2 is expense. Natural gas is generally less expensive.

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Charles Higley

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      So, there is no costs in the sulfuric acid and using it under controlled conditions to extract water from desert air? Yeah, it must be free, because they do not mention the technology, time, and expense involved.

      Reply

  • Avatar

    S.K.

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    You complain about censorship and then you block legitimate comment. You won’t get cent of money from me.

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Doug Harrison

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    Please stop printing these articles that presuppose there is a climate emergency and then offer a solution. I like to keep up with all the relevant things that are going on with the “climate debate” but this was a waste of my valuable time.

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Bevan

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    Readers should be aware that the current use of fossil fuels is reliable, efficient and cost effective. The generation of CO2 from fossil fuel use has not and cannot effect the Earth’s climate.
    My web page at: https://climateauditor.com/mauna-loa-observatory/
    reveals that CO2 change occurs after temperature change so it is impossible for it to be the cause of the earlier temperature event. The explanation for this is that the atmospheric temperature determines the rate of generation of CO2 via the multitude of life forms present within and on the Earth’s surface.
    Supporting evidence is described in the web page at:
    https://climateauditor.com/mauna-loa-weekly-co2-concentration-data/
    whereby the periodic passage of the Moon around the Earth was detected in the time series for the annual rate of change of the weekly CO2 data due to the monthly, small temperature change as the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth. Remarkably the empirical data contains the 29.5 day synodic period and the 27.2 day draconic period of the Moon’s orbit, the latter being when the Moon passes through the Earth’s elliptic plane.

    Reply

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