Author: Anderson Noel Riverol
Coordination, design, and editing: José Alberto León
Published by: We Are Innovation & Ciudadano Austral
Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless, and highly reactive gas found in all components of living matter and many minerals and is also the most abundant component of the universe. It can be used as energy by its characteristics. Namely, Chile is one of the pioneers with a future plan for hydrogen, in this case, green.
There are three types of hydrogen, gray hydrogen, produced from hydrocarbons such as natural gas, methane or other gasses, blue hydrogen that is obtained in a similar way to gray hydrogen, but carbon capture and storage technologies are applied, turquoise hydrogen that comes from natural gas treated by a pyrolysis process, but it is not exempt from emissions. Finally, the green hydrogen is obtained through the electrolysis of water using renewable energy, this through an apparatus called an electrolyzer that breaks the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen and then through another device called Fuel Cell, performs the reverse process that makes the electrolyzer, thus obtaining this green hydrogen.
This type of energy is peculiarly feasible in a country like Chile, both for its technological development and geographical location. To obtain green hydrogen, it is necessary to perform and develop renewable energies such as solar energy and wind energy in Chile. In fact, the national government is committed, through its ministry of energy, to produce the cheapest fuel on the planet in 2030, to be among the first three exporting countries of green hydrogen by 2040, and have 5GW of electrolysis capacity to replace fuels such as Diesel, which implies doubling the capacity of the country concerning the production of solar and wind energy for 2025.
All this to lead Chile to be the leading country of this type of energy, both for local use, its implementation is heavy industry such as mining or the area of agriculture, and with this reduce the carbon footprint as the export of green hydrogen and its derivatives, such as ammonia, methanol and synthetic fuels.
The development of this innovative energy could mean a very favorable economic impact for the country and, of course, an invaluable contribution to the relationship of the human being with the environment, so we are already working on the conglomerate necessary to make this possible, and that the conditions for the use and democratization of green hydrogen are developed.
