Progress of Cryogenics and Isotopes Separation

BIOHYDROGEN – THE ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY ALTERNATIVE AUTOMOTIVE FUEL

Mihai Anghel^*, Violeta Niculescu, Ioan Stefanescu

National Research and Development Institute for Cryogenics and Isotopic Technologies - ICIT Rm. Valcea, code 240050 - Rm. Valcea, Uzinei 4, CP7 Raureni, Valcea, Romania

ABSTRACT

At the start of the twenty-first century, we are facing significant energy challenges. The world’s energy requirements are currently satisfied by fossil fuels, which serve as the primary energy source. Consequently, overwhelming scientific evidence concludes that this unfettered use of fossil fuels has caused the world’s climate to change, with potentially disastrous effect. Hydrogen is seen as the energy carrier of the future. Biohydrogen is a replacement for fossil and biorenewable liquid fuels. Biomass conversion technologies are important for obtaining biofuels such as bioethanol, biodiesel, bio-oil, and biohydrogen. Biohydrogen is an environmentally friendly alternative automotive fuel that can be used in an internal combustion engine. Hydrogen can be produced from biorenewable feedstock via thermochemical conversion processes such as pyrolysis, gasification, steam gasification, steam reforming of bio-oils, and supercritical water gasification (SWG) of biomass. The hydrogen economy is a vision for a future in which hydrogen replaces fossil fuels. The transition to a hydrogen economy would require a huge investment in new infrastructure to produce, store and deliver hydrogen to end-users, to establish hydrogen stationary systems, as well as to develop and manufacture fuel cells. This study demonstrates that hydrogen can be produced economically from biomass. The pyrolysis-based technology, in particular, because its coproduct opportunities, has the most favourable economics.

KEYWORDS: biohydrogen, biomass, environment, fuel.