Journal of Renewable Energy and Environment (Oct 2021)

Production of Hydrogen Via Renewable Energy and Investigation of Water Molecular Changes During Electrolysis Process

  • Iessa Moosa,
  • Hussein A Kazem,
  • Laila Al-Iessi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.30501/jree.2021.260034.1167
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 4
pp. 19 – 28

Abstract

Read online

Studies on renewable energy are essential topics that help find new energy sources to replace fossil sources and promote environment friendliness. Hydrogen is the most practical alternative energy carrier source that meets the mentioned purposes. The mass of hydrogen element in the Earth's water was calculated and found to be about 2.1×1020 kg, which is greater than the mass of the world oil reserves by about 9×105 times. In addition, essential details of water molecular arrangement were investigated in order to better understand the electrolysis of water. Also, the energy of covalent and hydrogen bonds per molecule of water was theoretically calculated and found to be about 8.17×10-19 J/molecule and 3.87×10-20 J/molecule, respectively. In the electrolysis process, two stages should be undertaken: the first stage was to break hydrogen bonds between water molecules, in which all water eclectic dipoles would align in the direction of the Applied Electric Field across the electrolysis unit. The second stage was to break water covalent bonds to generate H2 and O2 gases. Moreover, the lowest cost to generate one kg of hydrogen (0.4 $/kg) by electrolysis method using solar energy was about 0.4 $, which has already been proven, while this value was about 2.8 $/kg upon considering the average price of electricity of Oman in comparison.

Keywords