Chai Maorong, Chief Scientist of: Conventional water electrolysis to hydrogen production must not be the mainstream in the future
"Water electrolysis to hydrogen production is currently the best way to produce hydrogen, but it is not the most effective method. ”
At the Sunrise Forum on New Energy and Carbon Neutrality held recently, Chai Maorong, chief scientist of the State Power Investment Group and CTO of National Hydrogen Technology, said that the production of hydrogen by conventional water electrolysis will definitely not be the mainstream green production route in the future.
The New Energy and Carbon Neutrality Sunrise Forum is organized by the New Energy and Carbon Neutrality Development Committee of the China International Council for the Promotion of Multinational Corporations. The committee was initiated by more than 20 central state-owned enterprises, multinational companies, listed companies and private enterprises, including PetroChina, CNOOC and State Grid.
Water electrolysis produces hydrogen by introducing direct current into an electrolyte filled with electrolyte, and water molecules undergo an electrochemical reaction on the electrode to decompose into hydrogen and oxygen. Conventional water electrolysis refers to the direct use of electricity from large power grids to produce hydrogen.
Chai Maorong believes that conventional electricity is a secondary energy source, hydrogen is also a secondary energy, and the efficiency of using secondary energy to make secondary energy is not the highest, "If you use electricity from the grid, such as coal power to produce hydrogen, it is better to directly use coal to produce hydrogen, which has 100% efficiency."
But he added that direct hydrogen production from renewable energy is a viable way because solar, wind and other energy can be seen as approximate primary energy sources.
From the perspective of carbon reduction, Chai Maorong said, for example, that in the future, the captured carbon dioxide electrolysis will be reacted with water to directly produce methanol, which is easier than the electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen and then prepare methanol.
"We don't want to use existing technologies to lock in the energy revolution that could happen in the future. He said at the forum.
Hydrogen is considered an important form of energy in the future because it does not emit greenhouse gases during combustion. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) predicts that hydrogen will meet 12% of the world's energy demand by 2050.
Water electrolysis is one of the mainstream low-carbon hydrogen production routes. According to the source of electricity, it can be divided into conventional electricity hydrogen production and renewable electricity hydrogen production.
Chai Maorong predicts that China's total energy consumption will increase by 20%-30% around 2060 compared to the current level. In addition to electricity, hydrogen and thermal energy will also be the main sources of energy supply.
According to the carbon emissions in the production process, hydrogen can be divided into gray hydrogen, blue hydrogen and green hydrogen. Grey hydrogen refers to hydrogen produced through fossil energy, with the highest carbon emissions, blue hydrogen refers to the application of carbon capture and storage technology on the basis of gray hydrogen to reduce carbon dioxide escape, green hydrogen refers to hydrogen produced through renewable energy, and basically does not emit greenhouse gases in the production process, and the technical routes used include hydrogen production from renewable electricity and photocatalytic hydrogen production.
Among them, green hydrogen is the main development direction in the hydrogen energy planning of various countries.
According to a KPMG research report, China's annual hydrogen production capacity in recent years has been around 33 million tons, with more than 60% coming from coal-to-hydrogen. Hydrogen produced through low-carbon routes such as water electrolysis accounts for only 1% of production. On the application side, due to the high cost of hydrogen production and storage, the use of hydrogen energy is narrow, and the application is still in its infancy.
Chai Maorong believes that the first step in China's hydrogen energy development is to open up the hydrogen application chain within 10-15 years and improve the economy of hydrogen energy utilization.
He said that he noticed that the hydrogen produced in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and other places could not be shipped, because the manufacturers only considered hydrogen production, and did not consider the downstream application scenarios.
Due to their resource advantages, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia produce more hydrogen as industrial by-products, and they are also rich in renewable energy.
Chai Maorong suggested that whether it is gray hydrogen, blue hydrogen or green hydrogen, the existing hydrogen energy resources should be used first, the downstream industrial chain should be opened, the technology should be improved, and the overall cost of the industrial chain should be reduced.
According to a research report by Guosen Securities, in recent years, China has emptied about 4.5 million tons of industrial by-product hydrogen, which is equivalent to the annual use of 970,000 hydrogen-fueled buses.
"The second is to take carbon reduction as the goal, and then invest in the research and development of green hydrogen production technologies such as hydrogen production from renewable electricity, pyrolysis hydrogen production, and photocatalytic hydrogen production in 10-15 years to reduce the cost of these technical routes. Chai Maorong said.
Chai Maorong said that the two major factors affecting the cost of green hydrogen are the price of electricity and the cost of transportation. In terms of electricity prices, the cost of hydrogen production from renewable energy can be comparable to the cost of hydrogen production from coal or natural gas only when the electricity price in western regions such as Xinjiang is lower than 0.15 yuan/kWh.
According to the announcement of the National Energy Administration, from April 2022, Xinjiang will include all the power generation of new energy parity projects put into operation from 2021 into the electricity market, with a target feed-in tariff of 0.262 yuan/kWh.
The third step is to plan China's new energy system from a holistic perspective with the goal of carbon neutrality, and make corresponding investments in regions and industries suitable for hydrogen energy.
Chai Maorong pointed out that at present, China lags behind Japan and Germany in the popularity of hydrogen energy, and the indicator of whether China's hydrogen energy is popularized in the future is to see whether hydrogen passenger vehicles have a large market, because hydrogen vehicles have a long range and the cost of hydrogen will be lower than oil.
"We are 'one car' away from Japan and Germany, as long as Chinese use hydrogen cars one day, it means that hydrogen energy has begun to spread." Chai Maorong said.
In March 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration (NEA) issued the Medium and Long-Term Development Plan for Hydrogen Energy (2021-2025). According to the plan, China aims to have 50,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles by 2025. According to the report of the China Hydrogen Energy Alliance, the number of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in China in 2022 will be about 12,700.
