European Efforts to Accelerate the Market Introduction of Renewable Hydrogen Production

Abstract

Converting solar energy efficiently into hydrogen is a key element to develop a sustainable and affordable hydrogen economy. The presentation will give an insight in how concentrated solar radiation can be coupled into hydrogen production processes. It will discuss the benefits and challenges of using the sunlight directly instead of converting it into other energy vectors. The main focus will be on technologies with the perspective of large scale production at very high temperatures. Therefore solar tower systems for such production processes will be presented. Also the different components like concentrator, receiver, and reactor of the solar production plants will be described, possible locations will be discussed, and synergies with other R&D efforts on using high temperature heat will be shown. Hybrid solutions e.g. from the sulfur industry will demonstrate how concentrated solar radiation can contribute even today to actual industrial business models. As many of the addressed processes have to be operated continuously high temperature heat storage will also be introduced. Especially thermochemical heat storage has the potential for being the ideal technology for heat provision in high temperature production processes. The European Union is supporting the development in its research framework programs since the 1980s. However until 2002 only a few projects were carried out. Since then a continuous improvement took place which was accelerated by the implementation of the European Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking in 2008. This private public partnership lead by industry is in charge to bring technologies faster into the market than research programs lead by the European Commission would. The presentation will give an overview of the actions carried out so far and the perspective of the European efforts.