Existing gas power plants could pump out hydrogen
Kick-starting the hydrogen economy will require cheap ways to produce vast quantities of the gas. But rather than building a new and costly plants, societies could modify existing gas powered stations instead, say Dutch and French chemists.
It is the latest proposal in a long line aimed at solving a problem that is the main barrier to a cleaner, low-carbon, hydrogen-fuelled future. However, the new idea is not without its problems: critics say retrofitting gas plants would be inefficient, but agree that the hydrogen-generation hurdle will only be surmounted using existing fossil fuel technology.
Although cheaper fuel cells and other technology needed to convert hydrogen to power are fairly advanced, there is currently no way to cheaply generate the large quantities of hydrogen needed.
Gadi Rothenberg’s team at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, working with colleagues at the University of Lyon 1 in Villeurbanne, France, say that because energy markets are conservative, only pragmatic solutions that use the existing fossil-fuel infrastructure are likely to succeed.
So the team has developed a catalyst it says could be placed in the combustion chamber of a methane-burning power plant which would allow it to produce hydrogen with little modification.
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