Tata Steel Reports Hydrogen Harvested from Steel

India-based Tata Steel’s research and development department reports that it has developed a way to produce hydrogen using steel byproducts.

In a process called hydrogen harvesting, water is sprayed over slag heated to 1,600 degrees Celsius to split the hydrogen and oxygen.

The chief of Tata Steel’s R&D department estimated the process yields up to 70 percent hydrogen.

Tata Steel has taken the first step to patent the extraction process.

The company plans to use the hydrogen in commercial trials starting in December at a ferro-alloy plant Tata owns in the Bay of Bengal. Tata expects to harvest hydrogen using slag available at the plant and substitute it for oil.

In doing so, the company hopes to cut costs and reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the plant.

Other groups have been working on techniques to extract hydrogen from water. At the REMC national convention held in February, Indiana-based AlGalCo showed off an aluminum-gallium alloy that could serve as a catalyst for extracting hydrogen from water.

Earlier this year, researchers at Pennsylvania State University also introduced an admittedly-inefficient process of extracting hydrogen from water based on a plant system.

The sixth largest steel producer in the world, Tata Steel is an arm of the Mumbai-based Tata Group, also parent company to Tata Motors.
 

http://cleantech.com/news/3701/harvesting-hydrogen-steel

Source: Fuel Cell Today