Production of Hydrogene and Environmental Impact of Storage the Energy Produced by Renewable Energies Via Hydrogen in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell

Abstract

Following the developments realized in recent years after the industrial revolution, a collective awareness of the need to protect and sustain the environment has emerged, mainly due to climate change, increased greenhouse gas emissions and depletion of natural fossil resources (oil, natural gas, coal, etc.). All these difficulties lead the humanity to think of improving the existing solutions, as well as to look for cleaner alternatives such as renewables energies for the satisfaction of the growing demand of energy needs and at the same time respond the climatic requirements at once. The difficulty of this later that must be overcome is the ability to store efficiently the energy produced in the form of electricity in clean and renewable energy production sites such as (the wind, photovoltaic,…), so that it can be used as needed. However, the electricity cannot be stored directly; therefore, it is necessary to convert electricity into storable and removable energy. The principle is to store energy from renewable sources via an electrolyzer, which converts electricity into hydrogen and oxygen during low consumption hours. This energy is returned to the grid via a fuel cell (which converts hydrogen and oxygen back into electricity) during periods of high consumption, especially when intermittent renewable energy sites do not produce anymore. In this perspective, the hydrogen (energy vector) remains one of the best promising solutions and one of the most attractive tracks, thanks to its energy and environmental qualities.