Global hydrogen production

R. A. MATZIE, and J. P. MAZZOCCOLI, Improvements in the Westinghouse Process for Hydrogen Production, Global 2003, Embedded Topical Within 2003 American Nuclear Society Winter Meeting, November 16-20, 2003,... 

Production. Global hydrogen fluoride production capacity in 1992 was estimated to be 875,000 metric tons. An additional 204,000 metric tons was used captively for production of aluminum fluoride. Worldwide capacity is tabulated in Table 5 (38). Pricing for hydrogen fluoride in 1990 was about 1.52/kg (39). 

Hydrocarbons (predominantly, NG) are likely to play a major role in hydrogen production in the near- to medium-term future. However, hydrocarbons significantly contribute to anthropogenic C02 emissions into the atmosphere. Spath and Mann [11] estimated that the global warming potential (GWP) of hydrogen production by the SMR process is 13.7 kg C02 (equiv.) per kg of net hydrogen produced. GWP is defined as a combination of C02, CH4, and N20 emissions expressed as C02 equivalence for a 100-year time frame. 

Nishihara, T. et al., Development of control technology for the HTGR hydrogen production system, New Orleans, in Proc. of the Global 2003, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 16-20, p. 320, 2003. 

Currently, global hydrogen production is 48% from natural gas, 30% from oil, and 18% from coal water electrolysis accounts for only 4%. The distribution of production reflects the effects of thermodynamic constraints on economic choices of the four processes for obtaining hydrogen, partial combustion of natural gas in a natural gas combined cycle power plant offers the most efficient chemical pathway and the greatest off-take of usable heat... 

Kubo, S., et al. (2005), A Bench Scale Hydrogen Production Test by the Thermochemical Watersplitting Iodine-Sulfur Process , International Conference on Nuclear Energy System for Future Generation and Global Sustainability (GLOBAL 2005), 9-13 October 2005, Tsukuba, Japan, paper 474. 

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