Scientists at Princeton University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association found out that a chemical reaction in the air may stop hydrogen from being the perfect fuel.
Hydrogen gas can mix with another gas in the atmosphere that helps break down methane, which is an extremely powerful heat-trapping gas. If too much hydrogen is released into the air, it could cause a lot of methane to build up and make global warming worse in the long run.
Matteo Bertagni, who works on something called the Carbon Mitigation Initiative from the High Meadows Environmental Institute said that hydrogen is a fuel of the future, however there are some issues with it that need to be solved before it can be widely used.
A research article published in Nature Communications written by Bertagni, studied what would happen if too much hydrogen was let out into the atmosphere. The result found that a lot of methane gas (which is bad for our environment) could be released. This chance of harm gets bigger if something called “methane”, one of the sources used to produce hydrogen, isn’t managed properly or minimized. So it’s important not to let too much hydrogen out and take special care when exploiting methane.
Amilcare Porporato, who is the Thomas J. Wu ’94 Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the High Meadows Environmental Institute, said that “we need to learn more about the effects of using hydrogen before switching to it as a Clean Fuel because it might cause new environmental issues.” Porporato is associated with the Carbon Mitigation Initiative, as well as a faculty at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.
We are currently facing an issue and the key element that ties it all together is a tiny, hard-to-measure molecule called the hydroxyl radical (OH). People like to call this “the detergent of the troposphere” because OH plays a really important role in removing greenhouse gases such as methane and ozone from Earth’s atmosphere.
Hydroxyl radical, which is found in the atmosphere, combines with hydrogen gas from different sources. But when too much of this kind of gas is present, there won’t be enough hydroxyl to break down methane. As a result, this would lead to an increase of methane in the atmosphere and add to global warming.
According to Bertagni, if the government starts producing hydrogen then it could have a big effect on the climate of the planet, and this will last for many years. He said that although hydrogen only stays in the air for two years, it causes methane to build up over time – so even 30 years later, we’d still be feeling the effects!
The researchers did a study which figured out the point of too much hydrogen in the air, when it starts to create more methane. This means that we need to be careful about how much hydrogen we put into the atmosphere. The research let us know what our targets should be so that this doesn’t happen.
Porporato said it’s really important that we set clear rules for how much hydrogen gas can be released, so that we know what to do when building future places where hydrogen will be used.
For green hydrogen, which is made from electricity from renewable sources when water is split into hydrogen and oxygen, the threshold for emissions is 9%. This means that if more than 9% of the green hydrogen escapes while being made or while being transported, it could increase atmospheric methane levels over the next few decades. If this happens, then some of the good effects of using something else instead of fossil fuels will be gone.
The requirements for blue hydrogen, which is hydrogen made from methane with captured and stored carbon, are even stricter than normal. That’s because when making this kind of hydrogen, there could be leakage of the methane gas too. For example, researches found that in order for atmospheric methane levels to stay steady, both the methane leaking and hydrogen leaking must be kept under a certain level – specifically, around 0.5% for the methane and 4.5% for the hydrogen.
Bertagni said that it is very important to keep track of the amount of hydrogen and methane we let out into the air. If there’s only a tiny bit, then one of the better forms of fuel (blue hydrogen) may not be much better than fossil fuels for another 20 or 30 years.
The researchers said that it’s important to think about how long we’re considering the effects of hydrogen on air methane. They suggested that in the long run (like over 100 years), switching to a hydrogen economy would still be good for fighting climate change, even if there is some warming from methane and hydrogen leaking out. Eventually, things would balance out and the benefits from a hydrogen economy would be clear. But before this happens, we could cause harm in terms of the environment and other parts of society because of extra hydrogen emission.
To be able to reach mid-century climate goals, it is important for institutions to make sure that hydrogen and methane don’t come out into the air. But this is hard since hydrogen molecules are really small and hard to predict or track. That’s why researchers need to figure out a better way of controlling and measuring these molecules so that their emissions can be managed more easily.
According to Bertagni, if companies and governments want to invest money in hydrogen as an energy resource, they have to do it correctly and efficiently. Otherwise, their efforts could completely cancel out the progress made in other areas to decrease the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. It’s all about finding ways to try to stop small leaks in eyes after glaucoma surgery. The study is called ‘Risk of the hydrogen economy for atmospheric methane’ and it was published in Nature Communications on 13 December 2022.
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