1.

0 Executive Summary
Preamble
1.1 Use of fossil fuels has become a part of daily energy needs and their requirement is
increasing with the passage of time. Consumption of fossil fuels gives rise to the
greenhouse gas emissions in the environment and causes ambient air pollution, which have
now become global concerns. This coupled with the limited reserves of fossil fuels have
encouraged and promoted the development and use of new and renewable energy sources,
including hydrogen energy as an alternative clean fuel. The technologies for production of
hydrogen from new and renewable sources of energy are not yet mature and the cost of
hydrogen produced through new and renewable energy sources is still very high and is not
competitive to that produced from fossil fuels. In order to meet the future energy demands in
sustainable and environment friendly manner, technologies are required to be developed for
the production, storage and applications of hydrogen in transportation sector as well as for
portable and stationary distributed & non-distributed power generation. In some countries
governments have started supporting these efforts.
1.2 Hydrogen is an energy carrier (a secondary source of energy) and is available in
chemically combined forms in water, fossil fuels, biomass etc. It can be liberated with the
electrical or heat energy input (generated from some primary energy source like fossil fuel,
nuclear power or a renewable energy source such as - solar, wind, hydro-electricity, etc.).
Presently the agriculture sector is the largest user of hydrogen (as nitrogenous fertilizer),
with 49% of hydrogen being used for ammonia production (Konieczny et al., 2008)
1.3 Approximately 95% of the hydrogen produced presently comes from carbonaceous raw
material, primarily of fossil origin. About 4% is produced through electrolysis of water. 3
1.4 Hydrogen is also produced as a by-product in chlor-alkali industries. There are around
40 such units in India, which produced nearly 66000 tons of by-product hydrogen during
2013-14. Around 90% of this by-product hydrogen is utilized for captive and other uses.
Only a fraction of this hydrogen is currently used for energy purposes. Around 6600 tons of
this hydrogen is still unutilized.