Kathmandu University

School of Engineering
Department of Mechanical Engineering

Problem Based Learning On

Replacement Scenarios in conventional cooking methods to use
alternative green fuel

Submitted By:
Ashim Lamichhane (41138)
Manish Devkota (41157)

Subject : Hydrogen Technology (MEPP457)

August,2021
Abstract
Hydrogen could be used as a ‘green’ cooking fuel, particularly in communities that
rely on biomass and fossil fuels, to reduce local pollution and related health effects.
This paper evaluates four impacts: fossil fuel depletion, climate change, ozone
depletion and summer smog by the use of conventional fuels as firewood LPG and
charcoal. In this paper we evaluate the environmental sustainability of hydrogen
relative to conventional cooking fuels typically used in developing countries, such
as LPG, charcoal and firewood and suggest a system where hydrogen is used as a
cooking fuel which is produced by PEM electroliser powered by solar PV.
Table of Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 4
Problem Statement ....................................................................................................................................... 5
Vision......................................................................................................................................................... 5
Issue Statement ........................................................................................................................................ 5
Method ..................................................................................................................................................... 5
Problem Solution Gap ................................................................................................................................... 5
Goal and Scope ............................................................................................................................................. 6
Comparison of Hydrogen with conventional fuels ....................................................................................... 6
Proposed Solution ......................................................................................................................................... 8
System description .................................................................................................................................... 8
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 11
References .................................................................................................................................................. 12
Introduction
Hydrogen is a clean and sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. It has no carbon emissions and offers
important improvements in health and quality of life. It also reduces deforestation for firewood
and charcoal. Basically, you are cooking with water. Most Nepalese cook with firewood, coal and
animal dung, while a small percentage use LPG. Indoor air pollution is a particularly
murderous problem, especially for poorer people. When households get wealthier, they
swap charcoal and firewood for LPG. In Nepal most households cook with LPG but have to endure
high costs from importing it into the country. Here most cooking is done by firewood, followed
by LPG and kerosene. Energy poverty is a major social issue, with the poor forced to use both
pollutant energy sources and inefficient traditional cooking devices.

We could eliminate all these health and environmental issues by using green hydrogen as the
cooking fuel. The main drawback at present is the capital cost, particularly if you use metal hydride
storage. It has the advantage of being safer than distributing hydrogen under high pressure, but is
prohibitively expensive at present.

The good news is that costs should fall in the coming years as demand for hydrogen storage
increases witness the fall in the price of solar panels in the past decade. If the global shift towards
a hydrogen economy becomes a reality, metal hydride technology will surely move in the same
direction. The cost of electrolytic hydrogen is already projected to keep falling year after year. It
may be between ten and 20 years before cooking systems like these can become a reality on a large
scale, but the potential is clear enough: if we can overcome the cost issues, there is a viable way
of tackling an age-old killer and making a big difference to the environment.

In many developing economies, a high percentage of domestic energy demand is related to

cooking, which primarily relies on fossil and biomass fuels. The use of these fuels has serious
health consequences affecting almost 3 billion people every year, largely due to the particulate
matter, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons emitted during their combustion. Cleaner cooking
systems, such as solar cookers and smokeless stoves, have been promoted in many developing
countries with varying degrees of success.
Problem Statement
Vision
We want change the conventional carbon emitting cooking method to green renewable form by
burning hydrogen produced by solar powered PEM electrolyser system.

Issue Statement
Use of conventional cooking fuel as LPG, coal, firewood issues high carbon emission which may
cause serious environmental problems as deforestation, air pollution. If we ignore this problem,
we will get seriously hit by energy crisis problem and we would be slacking back by using old
harmful energy source while the whole world is moving towards green fuel.

Method
We will use solar powered PEM electrolyser to produce hydrogen which will replace the
conventional cooking method.

Problem Solution Gap

In Nepal most of the cooking fuel consumed are LPG, charcoal and firewood which are non-
renewable energy sources and causes high emission of carbon in the environment. The economic
survey report shows that the LPG demand in urban households is high, and households normally
consume about 28.4 to 42.6 kg LPG monthly for cooking and heating purposes. Expanding clean
cooking could therefore help in achieving a range of goals: reducing deforestation and forest
degradation, reducing emissions of major climate-forcing agents including greenhouse gases and
short-lived climate pollutants, and improving health and household productivity. The clean
cooking fuel could be green hydrogen. We could use solar PV for energy generation and use PEM
electrolyser to produce hydrogen which can be used as clean cooking fuel. The major gap in the
use of hydrogen as cooking is safety factor. LPG has been the go to cooking fuel for Nepal in the
urban areas. The problem gap in the use of hydrogen is mainly due to,

• Safety issues.
• Lack of expertise in this sector.
• Lack of formulation of laws regarding environmental concerns.
• Hydrogen itself being an immature technology.
Goal and Scope
• To evaluate the environmental sustainability of hydrogen relative to conventional cooking
fuels typically used in developing countries, such as LPG, charcoal and firewood.
• To suggest an alternative green (Hydrogen), discuss its production, storage, end use and
also end life management.

Comparison of Hydrogen with conventional fuels

LPG is almost entirely responsible for the depletion of fossil fuels, this is mainly due to the
consumption of iron, manganese, nickel and chromium in the life cycle of steel used for the
cylinders and for the construction of LPG refinery. Emissions of CO2, N2O from its combustion
and leakage of CH4 across the LPG life cycle are the main contributors for climate change followed
by CH4 emissions from charcoal production and wood combustion, with the rest being due to CO2
emissions from charcoal production and wood transportation. Terrestrial acidification has an
almost equal contribution from LPG and firewood. This is due to the emissions of SO2 from the
processing of petroleum used in the production of LPG and from ammonia from burning the
firewood. Moreover, emissions of nitrogen oxides from the life cycle of crude oil and from burning
charcoal and wood also contribute to this impact. LPG is also the main contributor to freshwater
eutrophication. This is due to phosphate emissions during the processing of petroleum and LPG.

Firewood is also the greatest contributor to human toxicity. The main sources are emissions to air
of formaldehyde and furan from wood burning and leakage of chlorine to soil related to
maintenance of roads used for firewood transport.

Combustion of charcoal and firewood emits particulates which can have serious health effects.
charcoal and firewood are the only fuels for which the use stage contributes to all the impact
categories while the use of LPG affects only climate change and summer smog.
Firewood has the highest emissions of particulates and the related impact on health, 7.6 times
higher than charcoal on a life cycle basis and 29 times greater in terms of local emissions.[1] Using
hydrogen would also eliminate GHG emissions locally, with a particular benefit if it were to
replace LPG. The overall life cycle emissions would also be reduced significantly.
There would also be substantial benefits in replacing charcoal and firewood by hydrogen in terms
of terrestrial acidification. This impact generated locally by the combustion of firewood is 2.5
times higher than the total life cycle impact from hydrogen; for charcoal, the local impact is
equivalent to the whole life cycle impact of hydrogen. [1] A similar trend can be found for marine
eutrophication. Replacing firewood with hydrogen would reduce local human toxicity
significantly while also reducing the impact slightly elsewhere in the supply chain. Finally,
replacing the two solid fuels by hydrogen would benefit the local environment substantially with
respect to the reduced summer smog formation, while also reducing the impact in the rest of the
life cycle.

For comparison with hydrogen, the conventional fuels, typically used for cooking are LPG,
firewood and charcoal. While comparing LPG, firewood, charcoal and hydrogen, Hydrogen is
considered the best option for four impacts, fossil fuel depletion, climate change, ozone depletion
and summer smog. Hydrogen depletes 2.7 times less fossil fuel resources than charcoal and half
the amount depleted in the life cycle of firewood. [1] Hydrogen also has 8% and 2.4 times lower
human toxicity, respectively. In comparison to charcoal, the hydrogen system requires three times
less primary energy but, compared to firewood, its energy demand is 3.5 times higher. Relative to
LPG, hydrogen has 4.6 times lower fossil fuel depletion, four times lower ozone depletion and 6%
lower potential for summer smog formation. [1]

Therefore, hydrogen is by far the best option for climate change and environmental performance
among these cooking methods.

Fig 1 : System boundaries and life cycle stages for LPG, firewood and charcoal
Proposed Solution
We wish to minimize the carbon emission in the environment by eradicating the conventional
carbon emitting method and using green hydrogen as a cooking fuel. We have thought of a way of
hydrogen production by clean renewable energy, its storage and upto its end use. The hydrogen
production system comprises solar photovoltaics (PV), PEM electrolyser and water deioniser. The
produced hydrogen is then stored in cylinders and transported to the user to be used as cooking
fuel.

Fig 2 : Lifecycle of solar powered PEM electrolyser

System description
The core of the hydrogen-production system is the PEM electrolyser. A cascading system can be
used
for storage purposes, whereby hydrogen is first stored in high-pressure cylinders and then
decompressed to be stored in low-pressure cylinders, after which it is distributed to households for
use as a domestic cooking fuel. Solar PV panels provide electricity for the electrolyser and the
water deionisation plant. The water deionization plant is used to purify tap water to a required
quality standard.

• Solar PV
The use of solar energy to produce hydrogen can be conducted by two processes: water
electrolysis using solar generated electricity and direct solar water splitting. In our
proposed system, PV cells are used to create electrical energy. An electrolyzer passes this
electric current through water, causing the water molecules to separate into hydrogen and
oxygen gases.

• Water deionizer
The PEM electrolyser requires deionized water to operate. Deionization is a process done
when there is an immediate need of purified water distribution. It is imperative that
deionization is performed when the water is close to being utilized since extremely high-
water purity degrades quickly.
Deionization systems work by replacing negative and positive molecules in the water with
hydrogen (positive) and hydroxyl (negative) molecules. In effect, organic substances are
removed through filtration which improves the quality of the water and prevents the
formation of scale deposits forming.

• PEM electrolyser
The electrolyser comprises a stack of individual cells with the main components shown in
figure. Each cell consists of an anode, cathode and a Nefion PEM membrane. The cathode
consists of a porous graphite gas layer diffusor coated with platinum.
 Fig 3 : Main components of PEM electrolyser

• Hydrogen Storage
The produced hydrogen can be stored and distributed in a cascade-storage system. The
high-pressure cylinders are made of steel while the low-pressure containers are made of
fiberglass. The lifespan of the cylinders can be assumed as 15 years, after which they
should be repaired and reused.

• Use of Hydrogen
The use stage accounts for the cooking energy demand of the household and the
community. Cooking with a hydrogen flame isn't much different than cooking with
propane or natural gas. The differences are, Hydrogen burns with a very pale blue flame,
which is sometimes hard to see so a colorant can be added or a metal mesh placed in the
flame will glow. The most important to consider while cooking with hydrogen is that the
burner design must prevent air and hydrogen pre-mixing.

• End life management

End life management of system components can be landfilled at the end of their useful
lifetime.
 This can be reasonable as the recycling facilities in developing countries (as Nepal) is
lacking. However, if we get a proper recycling system, we can recycle most of the
components. The recycling rates for the metals are as aluminium 90%,[2] steel 85%, [3]
copper 45%.[4] Platinum and iridium used in the electrolyser can be 100% recycled.

Conclusion
This in this study we evaluated the life cycle environmental impacts of hydrogen produced by a
solar-powered PEM electrolyser and used as a cooking fuel. Its impacts have been compared with
the conventional cooking fuels used in developing countries: LPG, charcoal and firewood. We also
suggested a solar PV based green hydrogen production and its use as a cooking fuel.

In comparison with the conventional fuels, hydrogen is the best option for four impacts: fossil fuel
depletion, climate change, ozone depletion and summer smog (the last, jointly with LPG). The
greatest difference is noticed for climate change which is between 2.5 and 14 times lower than for
the other fuels. Switching to hydrogen would also help to reduce local health and environmental
impacts as it generates no pollution at the point of use. The greatest benefits would be achieved by
replacing firewood with hydrogen; this could also help to avoid deforestation and related impacts
on forest ecosystems.

While hydrogen offers both environmental and health benefits over solid cooking fuels, its
deployment in developing countries may be difficult due to costs, complexity of the technology,
lack of skilled labour, safety and consumer acceptance. It is recommended that these issues be
explored as part of future research.
References
[1] Rivera XC, Topriska E, Kolokotroni M, Azapagic A. Environmental sustainability of
renewable hydrogen in comparison with conventional cooking fuels. Journal of Cleaner
Production. 2018 Sep 20;196:863-79.

[2] IAI, 2009. Global Aluminium Recycling: a Cornerstone of Sustainable Development.

International Aluminium Institute, London, UK. http://www.world-aluminium.

org/media/filer_public/2013/01/15/fl0000181.pdf

[3] World Steel Association, 2012. Record Levels of Steel Scrap Consumption

Announced on America Recycles Day. Retrieved from: http://www.worldsteel.

org/media-centre/Industry-member-news/America-Recycles-Day.html

[4] International Copper Association, 2014. Copper Reclycling. International Copper

Association, Copper Alliance, New York, USA. http://copperalliance.org/

wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ica-copper-recycling-1405-A4-lowres.pdf