Green hydrogen will drive “energy revolution”, says Brazilian institute

He green hydrogen will drive a “energy revolution” in the world and the future of that transition is in Brazilaffirmed those responsible for the only center specialized in scientific research in this field in the country.

“The reduction in costs of solar and wind generation begins to make the production of green hydrogen viable in the world”stated Guilherme Cardim, director-president of the Advanced Institute of Technology and Innovation (IATI), an international reference in this field.

Green or renewable hydrogen (H2V) is the one generated through the process of “electrolysis of water”which is the separation of oxygen and hydrogen and is intended mainly for the production of fertilizers for agricultural activity.

The input can also be used as a fuel and industrial raw material for pharmaceuticals.

“This new fuel will play a fundamental role in the decarbonization of various production chains, substituting other polluting fuels”said Cardim, in which he admitted, however, that the process is in the phase of “transition”.

Green hydrogen research

IATI, based in Recife, was responsible for inaugurating the country’s first green hydrogen production pilot plant, located in the seaport of Pecém, in the metropolitan region of Fortaleza, the capital of the state of Ceará (northeast).

The project was carried out together with the Portuguese multinational EDP, which invested 45 million reais (about nine million dollars). for the prototype that will serve for large-scale production.

In another of the unprecedented initiatives, IATI began to transform polluting gases into clean energy in its laboratoriesthrough a device created by Brazilian scientists to be coupled to diesel engines, frequently used in thermoelectric plants.

“We could say that it is not a completely green hydrogen, from the environmental point of view it would be a ‘darker green’ hydrogen, but even so it does not stop contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions”Cardim stressed.

For the specialist, many companies that use thermoelectric “They cannot change their equipment that they have just bought or that still has a useful life”, but this type of innovation, to take advantage of the heat and the emission of its own gases, will become more and more common.

Thus, the IATI develops another project “hybrid” for the generation of green hydrogen from the residual energy of the photovoltaic circuits, using the heat from the panels, which in cities like Recife can reach sixty degrees Celsius.

That electricity generated by the innovative process to avoid “Waste of energy” you will be able to power alkaline electrolyzers to produce green hydrogen fuel.

The IATI Business Director, Paulo Gama, commented that green hydrogen also contributes to urban mobility solutions, such as the one being developed with Neoenergia, a company of the Spanish group Iberdrola, in the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, which since this year has banned the entry of fossil fuel vehicles.

In this sense, Gama explained, the institution is also working on the creation of green hydrogen tanks made of more resistant material, but with less weight compared to the conventional ones that are installed in vehicles powered by natural gas.

The transformation of carbon dioxide into clean energy and the generation of green hydrogen from it and from the waste that is wasted in the industry are the flagship initiatives of IATA, which also has forty other projects in different areas.

The 150 researchers, with a budget of 100 million reais (about twenty million dollars), work on initiatives in renewable energy, biotechnology, electric mobility, smart cities, energy storage, and computer science.

A biodegradable gel to clean surfaces stained by the crude oil spilled in the Atlantic in 2019 and which reached Brazilian beaches, a drone moved with the electromagnetic field of transmission lines and a type of bacterial cellulose to produce paper are other examples. Institute proposals.

Source: EFE