Sunlight Ancient and Modern: The Relative Energy Efficiency of Hydrogen and Fertilizer from Coal and Current Biomass Dr

Hydrogen production has gained increasing attention as a potential energy carrier, which can utilize many forms of renewable energy, such as biomass, wind and direct solar power. It has increased its significance as fossil fuels are being used up at a high rate and energy security is of greater importance to the United States and many other countries. Furthermore, hydrogen production offers the potential to alleviate concerns regarding global warming and air pollution, either through using renewable carbon or through point source carbon sequestration. In this paper we will focus on examining the efficiency of hydrogen production from current biomass compared to that from fossil fuel coal, which is closely related to current terrestrial biomass sources. We are exploring the efficiencies of maximum hydrogen production from biomass and from coal under current conversion technologies. Pyrolysis was chosen to convert biomass because it is gaining increasing attention as a potential widespread method for biomass utilization with carbon sequestration. Gasification was chosen to be used in coal conversion because it is one of the most widely used processes on coal and could obtain high hydrogen yield compared to other processes on coal. In both conversion processes, steam reforming is required to convert the pyrolyzed or gasified products further to produce hydrogen, as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1 Conversion Process from Biomass and Coal to Hydrogen Ultimately, it is sunlight that is stored in biomass and coal and then converted to hydrogen and other products. Therefore, it is worth exploring how much the solar energy is preserved and converted into hydrogen, in other words, how much solar energy is required for one unit mass of hydrogen produced. By including the sunlight to current biomass and coal as in Figure 2, this study will include the whole chain from sunlight to biomass growth and harvest Biomass Pyrolysis Steam Reforming Coal Gasification Steam