Available at www.sciencedirect.com journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/he A fossil-fuel based recipe for clean energy Surendra K Saxena à , Vadym Drozd, Andriy Durygin CeSMEC (Center for the Study of Matter at Extreme Conditions), College of Engineering and Computing, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USA article info Article history: Received 15 December 2007 Received in revised form 27 April 2008 Accepted 28 April 2008 Available online 17 June 2008 Keywords: Hydrogen Carbon-sequestration Coal-burning power plant abstract A zero-emission process of hydrogen production from fossil fuel through a system of reactions involving hydroxide, carbon, CO, CO 2 and water is described here. It provides for a complete sequestration of carbon (CO 2 and CO) from coal/natural-gas burning plants. The CO and or CO 2 produced in coal or natural gas burning power plants and the heat may be used for producing hydrogen. Economically hydrogen production cost is less than the current price of fossil-fuel produced hydrogen with the added benefit of carbon sequestration. The reduced cost of the hydrogen may aid in making a hydrogen fueled automobile economically viable. & 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Steam methane reforming is the most common and the least expensive method to produce hydrogen at present [1]. Coal can also be reformed to produce hydrogen, through gasifica- tion. Hydrogen production by CO 2 -emitting-free methods are either more expensive compared to those using fossil fuel or are in the very early stages of development. Examples are the methods proposed by Gupta et al. [2], the zero-emission coal technology (ZEC) by Zlock et al. [3,4], GE’s fuel-flexible technology [6] and several others [7–9]. Since United States has vast proven coal reserves, coal based technology of hydrogen production is very attractive. However, effective and low cost carbon sequestration technology has yet to be developed. Hydrogen is regarded as the energy for future but to produce and use hydrogen either by direct combustion or in a fuel cell, we need to use other sources of energy. Thus hydrogen or use of any material in producing energy cannot be an environmentally clean and economically viable solution unless we sequester carbon. We may eventually have the hydrogen solution for our transportation and other energy uses. However, such energy will continue to be dependent on the use of fossil fuel for long time and may not be economic. To turn things around, we have to use alternate methods of using coal, producing hydrogen and hydrides. Many hydrides are currently under consideration for use in on-board generation of hydrogen and the cost of producing the hydride is an important consideration. Coal is used extensively in producing synthetic fuels [1]. Use of coal in gasifiers is well established and hydrogen may be produced by the reaction: C+2H 2 O ¼ CO 2 +2H 2 . Gasifiers are operated between 500 and 1200 1C, and use steam, oxygen and/or air and produce a mixture of CO 2 , CO, H 2 , CH 4 and water. The CO produced can be further processed by the shift- gas reaction to produce H 2 with production of CO 2 : CO+- H 2 O ¼ CO 2 +H 2 . The following is an extract from a report by National Academy of Engineering, Board on Energy and Environmental Systems [5] and shows the importance of the present study: ‘‘At the present time, global crude hydrogen production relies almost exclusively on processes that extract hydrogen from fossil fuel feedstock. It is not current practice to capture and store the by-product CO 2 that results from the production of hydrogen from these feed stocks. Consequently, ARTICLE IN PRESS 0360-3199/$ - see front matter & 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2008.04.050 à Corresponding author. E-mail address: Saxenas@fiu.edu (S.K. Saxena). INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HYDROGEN ENERGY 33 (2008) 3625– 3631