ARCI scientist wants to produce hydrogen by adding methanol to the mix

Dr R Balaji, a scientist with the International Centre for Advanced Research in Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), is working on a concept that will lead to production of hydrogen at around $ 3 a kg.

                                                      Dr Rengarajan Balaji, Senior Scientist, ARCI

His method is to simply add methanol to water in an electrolyser.

Water splits into hydrogen and oxygen: H2O => H2 + O2

Methanol mixes with water to produce hydrogen:  CH3OH + H2O => 3H2 + CO2

By doing this, the requirement of electricity will come down to a third of water electrolysis.

But where will the methanol come from?

Dr Balaji points to a recent development at BHEL. The public sector company recently announced that it had set up a 0.25 tons-per-day pilot plant that uses 'fluidized bed gasification' technology to produce syngas from the high-ash Indian coals, and then convert the syngas to methanol. BHEL's technology's uniqueness is the ability to handle high ash and the heat required to melt the ash.

Dr Balaji has benchmarked methanol cost at the landed price of imported methanol at Mumbai port, at Rs 23 a litre and has arrived at hydrogen cost of $3-4 a kg, but BHEL's coal-derived methanol should be much cheaper. This route may make hydrogen at $ 2 per kg feasible.