Availability of industrial surplus hydrogen

12 The process of hydro-cracking was already developed in 1927 by the German company I. G. Farben Industrie, to transform lignite into gasoline. As a support for thermal or catalytic cracking, hydro-cracking is used nowadays to crack hydrocarbons that are more difficult to crack. 

14 According to Nitsch (2002) and the BMWA (2005), the direct energetic use of hydrogen worldwide is estimated at 40% to 50% of total hydrogen production. 

2-5 billion Nm3 per year) is assumed to be available to fuel transport applications during the hydrogen transition phase. 

By-product hydrogen is potentially one of the cheapest sources of hydrogen. The essential question, however, is not whether hydrogen will be produced per se and may be available as a by-product, but to what extent it can be supplied to an external (new) market and can be substituted by other energy sources (e.g., natural gas) in its use as a fuel. If the producer is prepared to supply by-product hydrogen, the final decision about whether to do so will depend on the price that can be obtained for the hydrogen or the price of the substitute energy source. 

With respect to the German case study used in Chapter 14 to discuss the build-up of a hydrogen infrastructure, Fig. 10.9 shows where surplus hydrogen capacities (from chlorine-alkali electrolysis) exist in Germany. If these capacities are added up, the resulting total amount is about 1 billion Nm3 per year (around 4% of total German hydrogen production). 

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