Is green hydrogen the fuel of the future
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we hear a lot of
noise about hydrogen recently and
most particularly hydrogen as a
potential fuel for the future
but what actually is hydrogen and how
can we
most importantly use it
first what we know now is that hydrogen
is the most abundant element on earth
it is mainly composed of a single proton
and a single electron but it rarely
comes along
it is composed with oxygen
it creates h2o which is very important
to remember
for later on composed with
carbon dioxide it creates methane
now
i will start with a little bit of
history because back in the day
we didn’t really know all of this
in fact you will be glad to know that it
is a british man
however born in france called henry
cavendish
a chemist and a physicist who in
1966
distinguished hydrogen as a single
element
scientific knowledge at the at the time
was not
very developed and therefore um
he identified two type of air the
non-flammable air which was composed of
carbon dioxide and the flammable air
which is
actually hydrogen and
through his experiences um he identified
that
the burning of hydrogen actually created
water
which as i remember as i mentioned
earlier is h2o
so this actually this process
identified that through the burning of
hydrogen actually
condensed some water now how did we use
it
um later on a couple of years later
they saw the development um of the
air balloon flight in 1783 in france
um which so the the first
airship coming coming into place
airships were very fashionable
at the time because they were very
practical
and it was very futuristic as well
they were mainly used for for transport
and the hygiene was therefore used as a
fuel however
they’re very poor and
they’re very poor usage and track
records uh you may also remember
the hindusburg disaster in 1937
we saw the airship flight
burning into flames um this german
airship
in the in the track um which
saw the end of uh of the airship era
and actually saw the end of hydrant
being used as a fuel
now today we still use hydrogen
in many industrial purposes
however we use it to make ammonia
for example and this is used for
fertilizer
and we also use it um adding it
into fat through the process of
hydro-generated
process and you will find it in your
morning peanut butter for example
um so there is different uses of
hydrogen today but not really um
as a fuel so let me now go back to
a little bit back in time in the
19th century and the industrial
revolutions
to explain the the beginning of the end
the usage and the drastic usage of
energy sources so in the 18th
um in the 1800s
you will see the development of
um energies to power
steam engines and factories
but also fuel was at the time used to
to fuel people homes and used to cook
and this fossil fuels was used as a
fairly cheap way for powering
people’s homes the fossil fuel
used were mainly
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mainly made of coal oil
gas but also renewable sources such as
your windmill
and your hydro water
generated power
so we used we used through the
industrial revolution
energy and fossil fuel in extensive
amounts
this at the time we did not
realize how damaged it could be to the
planet
and to the future generation to come in
fact
it is important to mention that this
fossil fuels are still
widely used today these are mainly
natural gas petroleum and coal
which amount to nearly 85 percent
of the primary energy consumptions in
the world
today in fact your
homes is probably uh heated by a gas
boiler
as well as you’re you’re probably using
your cooker and uh
for powering your your shower um your
car
maybe running on diesel or petrol and
this is the same
the same apply for the industry
so we need to lean away from
the reliance on on fossil fuel and
researchers mentioned that actually by
2050 we may lack of these resources
however there is a second important
challenge to to fossil fuels
which is climate change
now the burning of fossil fuels
creates carbon dioxide which
trapped in the in the atmosphere for a
long period of time
creates temperature to rise
and this is what we see
as as the climate emergency and climate
change
and therefore we have to when we think
about the decarbonization of the uk
we not only need to find first
alternative
to fossil fuels but also
find solutions to reduce our greenhouse
gas emissions
so what are we doing in the uk
and particularly in the northwest to
help and to lean away from this reliance
on fossil fuel
and to reduce our greenhouse gas
emissions
now there is a lot of initiatives
happening in the northwest for
decarbonizing heat
and by that i mean your homes but also
the industry
however today i will just focus on
transport
because transport is mainly the
um the largest emitter
of um carbon emissions
and when i think about
transport this this
comprise of road transport maritime
rail but also the aviation
ind within this sector road transport is
the largest emitter of carbon dioxide
and you will
road transport is made of the car you
use every day
to go to your nearest supermarket or
walkable
take away this is your tesco
delivery driver that provided you with
your very important toilet paper during
the lockdown
and but also um construction
vehicles um to build our houses
or the roads nearby or
are the um very high heavyweight
vehicles um that travels
from china to deliver your electric
tablets
or your uh your fruit and veg
coming from anywhere in the world
because we can now find in the
supermarket bananas kiwis and all of
those products
at any time whenever we want
so this change in consume
in the consumers kind of
made these sectors more and more
important
we are heavily reliant on road transport
nowadays
we are getting used to um to having
everything we want
whenever we want however
we need to change the way
we are getting those products so that we
can get them in a more
sustainable way and this
this means changing the way we actually
fuel those vehicles
and this is exactly the thinking behind
project vanguard
which we initiated with the cheshire
east council
in 2019 now most of you will be aware
that most of the councils in the uk
declared the climate emergency
and by that they took
actions to actually
help decarbonize their region
however most of the homes or your homes
is is not owned by the council nor
are the industries nearby or passing by
and this this is not an easy task for
for the council
but um they have a role to
lead the way in in the decarbonization
and what they do is providing services
to the residents one of these services
is waste services provided by gesturists
through their wholly owned company anza
which you may have seen
collecting your waste so refuse
trucks can actually be converted
to fuel cell vehicle to fuel cells
running on hydrogen
fairly easily and this is what project
badgards
is intending to do with the conversion
of two refused trucks
running off hydrogen however
how are we actually going to produce
this hydrogen to fuel those vehicles
now green hydrogen is produced
using clean electricity
from renewable sources
and by electrolyzing
the water um to
separate the hydrogen atom
to its molecular twin oxygen
if you remember at the beginning of the
talk i mentioned h2o the hydrogen and
the oxygen
now to create this green hydrogen
we are going to we have secured a
planning permission
um to install a large solar
panel pv array on
the environmental hubs of cheshire east
which is located in middleweight
these solar panels
will create the green electricity
and this green electricity will then be
connected
to the gray recycling
water hub
to create the electrolysis
so you we would have the solar pv
um powering the water
this will create the electrolysis and we
will separate the molecules to create
hydrogen
now as we live in the uk
the sun is not shining every day we are
quite lucky today
as you can see um but it’s
it’s not happening every day and we
therefore need
to store the hydrogen so we can use it
when we need it we will thus
have a reservoir or a tank
close to the production unit so that
we can store this hydrogen at times
not needed for example the
vehicles may not be running at weekends
and and this would be very important
to to be able to use hydrogen
whenever uh whenever the trucks
will be needed
how are we going to fuel those vehicles
we need a refueling station
so the refueling station will be
installed
at the same location next to the current
diesel refueling station
so this is the thinking behind
a project vanguard and hopefully
if all goes well you will be able to see
those two refused trucks coming to
collect your domestic waste
in april next year
so this may not seem as a very big
impact on the large scale
however if we all focus on uh on
and accomplishing the little things
greater
impact might follow suit in fact
you can already go and purchase a
hydrogen car
and you will soon find hygiene
coming into your homes i hope this gives
you a great overview
of why hydrogen will be a fuel for the
future