Course Details

1. History and the state-of-art in hydrogen technology

Hydrogen, since a prehistoric era, has gone through a series of technological breakthroughs. It is astonishing to see how fast technological development has been achieved in the hydrogen economy. The section describes the historical perspectives of hydrogen and its origin. It also highlights the evolution of hydrogen as an emerging fuel for the future with tremendous prospects. Later, state-of-art hydrogen technologies will be addressed. Hydrogen technologies refer to hydrogen production, storage, T&D, and its end-uses for various applications such as transport, industry, stand-alone power systems, and residence. This lecture also includes the history of fuel cells and electrolyzers. In this section, we will also discuss power-to-gas and power-to-x methods taking a few examples of demonstration projects or case studies. Additionally, future hydrogen energy road-map of several countries like the US, EU, South Korea, Japan, and China will also be introduced to speculate the technological status of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies by 2050 in the global context.  

2. Fundamentals of hydrogen production

In this lecture, terminologies and basic principles of hydrogen production will be explained. Definition of different Electrolysers, operational considerations, parameters, and their interrelationship will be presented. Various production pathways of hydrogen will be introduced, such as NG SMR, coal gasification, solar-to-hydrogen, wind-to-hydrogen, biomass gasification, hydroelectricity-to-hydrogen, nuclear-to-hydrogen, coke-oven gas (by-product). In this lesson, the production process details, challenges, and prospects of these pathways will be highlighted. This section also presents the current status of hydrogen production technologies and future trends. The SWOT analysis of different production options will be addressed.  

3.    Storage, T&D, and safety issues of hydrogen

Various storage technologies for hydrogen, transportation options, and safety issues associated with hydrogen production, storage, T&D, and application must be underlined. This section also covers the standard protocols, safety codes, and regulations for the safe production, storage, and handling of hydrogen.  

4.    Current practices and future trends in the end-use of hydrogen

This section presents the currently available end-uses of hydrogen, such as fuel cells, ammonia synthesis, HCNG, etc. as well as the future trends in the hydrogen utilization. Overall challenges of the current practices need to be highlighted, alongside opportunities for efficient, effective, and cheaper utilization of hydrogen in the future. The SWOT analysis of hydrogen technologies for the end-use of hydrogen will be demonstrated.  

5.    Economics of hydrogen technologies

In this section, the focus is to compare different hydrogen production pathways in terms of cost-effectiveness and compare different types of electrolyzers and fuel cells in terms of financial perspectives. For the renewable energy sources integrated with hydrogen technologies, an approach to techno-economic assessment will be presented to compare various hydrogen-integrated RES systems. Additionally, this lecture also includes the strategy to formulate an energy-economics model to analyze different hydrogen energy systems. The concept of the ‘hydrogen economy’ will be presented in this section.  

6.    Environmental assessment (E.A.) of hydrogen technologies

This section presents an introduction to LCA, its methodology, and simulation techniques to evaluate various pathways of hydrogen production. A short introduction to GREET (The Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation) software by Argonne National Laboratory will be delivered. This section also assesses the comparison of FCVs, with BEVs and ICEVs, in terms of environmental impacts. The principal idea is to demonstrate a systematic way to perform well-to-wheels analysis for alternative-fueled vehicles or, in general, life cycle analysis of hydrogen technologies, especially electrolyzers and fuel cells.

7.    Summary, mini-project work, and closure

In this lecture, the team leader of GHLab will summarize the actual contents learned throughout the lecture series program. Necessary discussions will be done with Q&A sessions followed by assigning mini-project work to each group. The group work will emphasize a practical scenario, and it will require knowledge from a multi-disciplinary field of study.

Assignment and mini-project work submission

Each group must submit a group assignment and report of mini-project work. Submissions will be made through email. The submission deadline of the assignment will be the day before the next lecture series, and of mini-project work is 15^th October 2020.