Green hydrogen production by water splitting using scrap metals at high temperature

Abstract

Currently green hydrogen production is attracting global attention. In this context, sustainable hydrogen production processes have been explored by using variety of materials and methods. Generation of hydrogen without CO2 emissions is the key for carbon-free energy economy in future. Enormous amounts of scrap iron, metallurgical wastes and ferrous metals are produced in industrial processes. In this work, the reaction between metal scrap and steam is studied for hydrogen production. The scrap materials are loaded in a packed-bed reactor to produce green hydrogen by water splitting at high temperatures. This method produced 500 mL of green H2 per gram of scrap material at 1150 °C with a conversion efficiency of about 94%. This is a potential method to utilize the scrap metals for large scale production of green hydrogen without carbon emissions.