Approximately 9 million tonnes of hydrogen was produced annually, growing at 10 percent per year.

South Africa uses hydrogen in the chemical and refining sectors and was developing hydrogen for underground mining motive power, back-up power supplies and energy storage. Medium to long-term applications include using hydrogen to power fuel cell cars.

Global concern for increased energy demand, increased cost of limited fossil resources, energy security and global climate change were leading to increased interest in using sustainable energy in conjunction with hydrogen to “leverage” existing hydrocarbon reserves to reduce dependence on petroleum imports and greenhouse gas emissions.

A hydrogen economy defines a system in which hydrogen was used to more efficiently utilise current hydrocarbon resources; with an end-goal to displace petrol or diesel fuels derived only from crude oil with a fuel derived from hydrogen.

More than 95 percent of merchant hydrogen was being used for industrial applications. South Africa uses hydrogen in the chemical and refining sectors amongst others for the production of ammonia, fertiliser and liquid fuels.

Possible short to medium-term hydrogen applications for South Africa and the Sub-Saharan region include underground mining motive power, back-up power supply, small portable power, direct fuel for heaters and burners and energy storage where supply and use was out of phase.

Medium to longer-term applications relate to transport applications using hydrogen to power fuel cell cars. The emerging global hydrogen economy would require thousands of additional megatons of hydrogen per year, but calls for sustainable primary energy sources and sustainable hydrogen feedstock’s in order to meet the global energy challenge.

The transport sector consumes approximately one third of total global primary energy supply and relies heavily on imported petroleum. An emerging transport hydrogen economy promises to alleviate this burden, but to do so development was needed in several sectors, including the production, delivery, storage and utilisation of the hydrogen depending on what the final use was.

R&D and market development of fuel cell technologies were required and time would indicate which technology was the best fit for which application at what cost. In addition to infrastructure development and fuel cell technologies, economic clean hydrogen production remains one of the biggest challenges in the realisation of the hydrogen economy.

Today there is no clean, large-scale, cost-effective hydrogen production process available for commercialisation. However, the hydrogen economy (including fuel cell technologies) was receiving increased international attention with estimated global investments in 2003 in the region of $3bn per annum.

Although hydrogen is the most bountiful element on earth, it is chemically bound as water, hydrocarbons, carbohydrates or other compounds and therefore energy is required to separate hydrogen from its chemical bonds.

Virtually all hydrogen today is produced from fossil fuels which give rise to CO2 emissions; current hydrogen production technologies include steam-methane-reforming and the partial oxidation, autothermal reforming and gasification of coal or other organic fuels and small-scale water electrolysis.

However, hydrogen could be cleanly produced from water using conventional electrolysis, high-temperature steam electrolysis or thermo-chemical water splitting. High-temperature steam electrolysis and thermo-chemical water-splitting technologies were receiving increased international interest due to their promise for significant efficiency increases (~43 %+) compared to conventional electrolysis (~24%) when operated at high temperatures – preferably 850°C+.

Water splitting offers a solution to produce hydrogen from a sustainable feedstock without polluting CO, but to realise this a sustainable clean energy source was required to split the water at high temperatures. The use of nuclear process heat, to supply the needed high temperatures, would reduce the consumption of hydrocarbons as fuel (reserving fossil fuels to be used as feedstock to produce valued products) and would reduce global CO2 emissions, potentially below Kyoto targets.

The Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, under development in South Africa, was presently the only CO2-free heat source technology which, in the near-term, could economically provide large amounts of heat to the process in the 900°C temperature range.

PBMR technology could generate hydrogen through water electrolysis at higher overall efficiencies than today’s Light Water Reactors (LWRs) in addition to having a niche market in supplying high temperature process heat to high temperature steam electrolysis and thermochemical water-splitting.

PBMR technology could also be used in the near term to reduce CO2 emissions by replacing the burning of natural gas for hydrogen production using Steam-Methane-Reforming. Construction of the PBMR Demonstration Power Plant (DPP) would be completed by 2010. A follow-on PBMR reactor for the production of process heat could be completed by the 2016 timeframe.

An added benefit to generating clean hydrogen was its promise to enable coal-to-liquid (CTL) producers to produce gasoline from coal without emitting CO2. Current CTL technology uses coal, water, electricity, hydrogen and oxygen as input to produce synthetic liquid fuels. CO2 emissions result from burning coal (to produce process electricity) and from producing hydrogen from coal.

A clean source of hydrogen, electricity and steam would enable CTL processes to approach zero CO2 emissions in producing liquid fuels from coal. Clean liquid fuels from nuclear energy and water were a potential strategic technology, which would extend use of carbon reserves and the existing energy infrastructure (natural gas and transportation fuels) with reduced CO2 and other emissions.

Economic drivers include production cost of hydrogen, CO2 credits, displacement of coal, and major off-sets in CTL capital and operating cost (eliminates approximately half of gasification and all CO2 sequestration systems). The availability of clean liquid fuels derived from coal would ensure that large importers of oil would no longer be so dependent on oil from a few relatively unstable states.

High temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactors, such as the PBMR, holds the promise of diminishing the global energy challenge by using its high temperature nuclear heat as input to industrial process applications, notably the production of hydrogen through water-splitting.

South Africa’s abundance of resources and technologies highlights its opportunity to play a key role in the emerging hydrogen economy, which would lead to global energy leadership, local economic development and knowledge creation for South Africa.