Decarbonising with green solar hydrogen energy

Global urbanisation and industrialisation are leaving mighty dents and enormous carbon footprints that can’t be “absorbed” and remain resilient in the environment .

As the world braces to advocate what’s potentially the single and largest collective effort in an attempt to halt or ultimately reverse the effects of global warming and climate change, the question remains as to whether we have what it takes to “decarbonise” by 2030.

The obvious answer to this is no.

“Most countries are still highly dependent on using carbon-derivative fuels as their primary energy sources, and with various existing fossil fuels-related energy infrastructures in place,” says Associate Professor Chong Meng Nan from the School of Engineering, Monash University Malaysia.

Under the Paris Agreement, it’s expected the world's carbon emissions will need to be cut by 50% by 2030 in order to keep a global temperature rise well within 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level.

“This means we’ll need to ‘decouple’ the relationship between global urbanisation and industrialisation activities from carbon emissions – indicating that while we’re urbanising and industrialising more rapidly, the carbon emissions in the environment will need to take a significant dip.

“Ironically, the concept of decoupling is almost impossible to achieve entirely in the immediate-to-mid-term unless we have sustainable and renewable energy systems and infrastructures that are ready to plug in that can cater for the scale purpose as well,” says Dr Chong.

In moving away from the carbon-based economy, there’s also a need to adopt new engineering methods – the same as people adapting to environmentally-conservative lifestyles.

Read more: ‘Green’ versus ‘blue’ hydrogen, and the futility of ‘colours’

Dr Chong leads a research team of national and international researchers comprising eminent research scientists, postdoctoral fellows and PhD students, working on developing advanced nanotechnological systems to produce green solar hydrogen (H2) fuels and useful C1-C4 chemicals.

Green H2 fuel plays a vital role during this critical energy transition period. However, according to Dr Chong, many areas still require new engineering design and improvements – from production, storage, transportation and use. When H2 fuel is combusted, it yields energy and water as the byproduct and leaves the carbon emissions out of the picture, which is undoubtedly beneficial for the environment.

“One of the major issues surrounding the production of H2 fuel lies in the energy input required to extract H2 that presents in numerous compounds, such as water (H2O), ammonia (NH3), methane (CH4), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), and others.

“It would be counterintuitive to produce H2 fuel using fossil fuels, which still contribute to carbon emissions within the product life cycle, and don’t substantiate in the economic sense,” he added.

Read more: How hydrogen can be harnessed to help in the decarbonisation effort

Currently, the water-gas shift reaction accounts for more than 95% of global H2 production, rated as brown and/or grey H2 fuel, due to the use of fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas during its production.

“Such H2 fuels don’t warrant the ‘sustainable identity’, as they’re just acting as shadow fuels. Burning them would equate to using fossil fuels and still contributing to vast anthropogenic carbon emissions in the environment,” says Dr Chong.

The green engineering approach

Dr Chong’s research team was established in 2013 through the support of various universities, and national and international competitive funding schemes amounting to more than RM 20 million, and growing.

Several ongoing research projects are being developed into green engineering solutions for the related industries in Malaysia and other countries globally.

“We’re adopting a ‘whole of system design’ concept in our engineering approach. We closely scrutinise the relationships and synergies between system factors in ensuring the most feasible, cost-effective and environmentally-friendly green engineering systems are designed and implemented.

“Sustainability is the core of our materials and engineering process system design, and isn’t taken as an ‘add-on’ after exercising the norm engineering approach.;” 

The team is developing a pragmatic and advanced nanotechnological system for scale-up production of green H2 fuel encompassing its entire production life cycle. There are also other advanced systems being developed within the research team, focusing on the production, storage, transportation and use of green H2 fuel.

“By working closely with the industries, we’re anticipating a rapid translational and adoption of our technology in establishing Malaysia as a globally-competitive supplier in exporting green H2 fuels as early as 2027. In return, this will bring societal impacts and changes as it creates an important paradigm shift towards a carbon-free energy society,” says Dr Chong.