Australia

Australia’s transition to a sustainable hydrogen economy by 2050 presents a transformative opportunity for decarbonization economic growth and global energy leadership. This review critically examines the state of hydrogen development in Australia covering supply chains export markets circular economy integration social dimensions and policy implications. The analysis highlights the critical interplay between technological innovation strategic government initiatives and market demand as key enablers for large-scale hydrogen deployment by 2050. The paper identifies research gaps in harmonizing hydrogen development with circular economy principles safety social equity and policy alignment. This work outlines clear policy implications including the need for coordinated infrastructure investment domestic market stimulation international certification for exports and integration of hydrogen into broader energy system planning. This work serves as a roadmap synthesizing recent literature and addressing the challenges and opportunities emphasizing cross-sector collaboration regulatory reform and targeted innovation investment. This review contributes a strategic framework to support decision-makers industry partners and researchers in advancing Australia’s hydrogen sector by 2050.

A dedicated grid-tied offshore hybrid energy system for hydrogen production is a promising solution to unlock the full benefit of offshore wind and solar energy and realize decarbonization and sustainable energy security targets in electricity and other sectors. Current knowledge of these offshore hybrid systems is limited particularly in the integration component control and allocation aspects. Therefore a grid-integrated analytical model with a power dispatch allocation strategy between the grid and electrolyzer for the co-production of hydrogen from the offshore hybrid energy system is developed in this paper. While producing hydrogen the proposed offshore hybrid energy system supplies a percentage of its capacity to the onshore grid facility and the amount of the electricity is quantified based on the electricity market price and available total offshore generation. The detailed controls of each component are discussed. A case study considers a hypothetical hybrid offshore energy system of 10 MW situated in a potential offshore off the NSW of Australia based on realistic metrological data. A grid-scale proton-exchange membrane electrolyzer stack is used and a model predictive power controller is implemented on the distributed hydrogen generation scheme. The model is helpful for the assessment or optimization of both the economics and feasibility of the dedicated offshore hybrid energy farm for hydrogen production systems.

Magnesium hydride owns the largest share of publications on solid materials for hydrogen storage. The “Magnesium group” of international experts contributing to IEA Task 32 “Hydrogen Based Energy Storage” recently published two review papers presenting the activities of the group focused on magnesium hydride based materials and on Mg based compounds for hydrogen and energy storage. This review article not only overviews the latest activities on both fundamental aspects of Mg-based hydrides and their applications but also presents a historic overview on the topic and outlines projected future developments. Particular attention is paid to the theoretical and experimental studies of Mg-H system at extreme pressures kinetics and thermodynamics of the systems based on MgH₂ nanostructuring new Mg-based compounds and novel composites and catalysis in the Mg based H storage systems. Finally thermal energy storage and upscaled H storage systems accommodating MgH₂ are presented.

This paper reports a new approach for exposing materials including solar cell structures to atomic hydrogen. This method is dubbed Shielded Hydrogen Passivation (SHP) and has a number of unique features offering high levels of atomic hydrogen at low temperature whilst inducing no damage. SHP uses a thin metallic layer in this work palladium between a hydrogen generating plasma and the sample which shields the silicon sample from damaging UV and energetic ions while releasing low energy neutral atomic hydrogen onto the sample. In this paper the importance of the preparation of the metallic shield either to remove a native oxide or to contaminate intentionally the surface are shown to be potential methods for increasing the amount of atomic hydrogen released. Excellent damage free surface passivation of thin oxides is observed by combining SHP and corona discharge obtaining minority carrier lifetimes of 2.2 ms and J0 values below 5.47 fA/cm2. This opens up a number of exciting opportunities for the passivation of advanced cell architectures such as passivated contacts and heterojunctions.

New vehicle technologies and fuels will drive the future of road transport in Australia. Increased availability of battery electric vehicles hydrogen fuel cell vehicles biofuels and associated recharging and refuelling infrastructure will:

• give consumers more choice
• provide productivity emissions reduction fuel security and air quality benefits

Our Future Fuels Strategy: Discussion Paper sets out the direction and practical actions to enable the private sector to commercially deploy low emissions road transport technologies at scale."

Metal hydrides are known as a potential efficient low-risk option for high-density hydrogen storage since the late 1970s. In this paper the present status and the future perspectives of the use of metal hydrides for hydrogen storage are discussed. Since the early 1990s interstitial metal hydrides are known as base materials for Ni – metal hydride rechargeable batteries. For hydrogen storage metal hydride systems have been developed in the 2010s [1] for use in emergency or backup power units i. e. for stationary applications.<br/>With the development and completion of the first submarines of the U212 A series by HDW (now Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems) in 2003 and its export class U214 in 2004 the use of metal hydrides for hydrogen storage in mobile applications has been established with new application fields coming into focus.<br/>In the last decades a huge number of new intermetallic and partially covalent hydrogen absorbing compounds has been identified and partly more partly less extensively characterized.<br/>In addition based on the thermodynamic properties of metal hydrides this class of materials gives the opportunity to develop a new hydrogen compression technology. They allow the direct conversion from thermal energy into the compression of hydrogen gas without the need of any moving parts. Such compressors have been developed and are nowadays commercially available for pressures up to 200 bar. Metal hydride based compressors for higher pressures are under development. Moreover storage systems consisting of the combination of metal hydrides and high-pressure vessels have been proposed as a realistic solution for on-board hydrogen storage on fuel cell vehicles.<br/>In the frame of the “Hydrogen Storage Systems for Mobile and Stationary Applications” Group in the International Energy Agency (IEA) Hydrogen Task 32 “Hydrogen-based energy storage” different compounds have been and will be scaled-up in the near future and tested in the range of 500 g to several hundred kg for use in hydrogen storage applications.

In this report for the first time it has been observed that proton-conducting oxide BaZr_0.1Ce_0.7Y_0.2O_3−δ (BZCY) has significant promotion effect on the catalytic activity of Ni towards ammonia synthesis from hydrogen and nitrogen. Renewable hydrogen can be used for ammonia synthesis to save CO₂ emission. By investigating the operating parameters of the reaction the optimal conditions for this catalyst were identified. It was found that at 620 °C with a total flow rate of 200 mL min−1 and a H₂/N₂ mol ratio of 3 an activity of approximately 250 μmol g⁻¹ h⁻¹ can be achieved. This is ten times larger than that for the unpromoted Ni catalyst under the same conditions although the stability of both catalysts in the presence of steam was not good. The specific activity of Ni supported on proton-conducting oxide BZCY is approximately 72 times higher than that of Ni supported on non-proton conductor M_gO-C_eO₂. These promotion effects were suspected to be due to the proton conducting nature of the support. Therefore it is proposed that the use of proton conducting support materials with highly active ammonia synthesis catalysts such as Ru and Fe will provide improved activity of at lower temperatures.

One of the most attractive routes for the production of hydrogen or syngas for use in fuel cell applications is the reforming and partial oxidation of hydrocarbons. The use of hydrocarbons in high temperature fuel cells is achieved through either external or internal reforming. Reforming and partial oxidation catalysis to convert hydrocarbons to hydrogen rich syngas plays an important role in fuel processing technology. The current research in the area of reforming and partial oxidation of methane methanol and ethanol includes catalysts for reforming and oxidation methods of catalyst synthesis and the effective utilization of fuel for both external and internal reforming processes. In this paper the recent progress in these areas of research is reviewed along with the reforming of liquid hydrocarbons from this an overview of the current best performing catalysts for the reforming and partial oxidizing of hydrocarbons for hydrogen production is summarized.

The Global Status of CCS Report 2020 demonstrates the vital role of carbon capture and storage technologies (CCS) in reducing emissions to net-zero by 2050 as well as documenting the current status and important milestones for the technology over the past 12 months.<br/>The report provides detailed information on and analyses of the global CCS facility pipeline international policy perspectives CO2 storage and the CCS legal and regulatory environment.<br/>In addition four regional updates provide further detail about CCS progress across the Americas Europe Asia Pacific and the Gulf Cooperation Council States and a Technology section provides updates on key innovations and applications of CCS.

Frontier Economics has been engaged by the Commonwealth Department of the Environment and Energy (now Industry Science Energy and Resources) (the Department) to undertake an indicative analysis of the economics of blending hydrogen in Australian natural gas distribution networks. Our analysis is limited to a specific gas distribution network servicing urban areas of Melbourne.

We have investigated the economics of blending hydrogen in a natural gas distribution network by examining a number of energy supply options including options that involve blending hydrogen. While we consider that these cases we have examined are useful for understanding the economics of hydrogen blending at low rates in Victoria and for understanding the factors that are likely to drive the economics of blending at higher rates or in other regions it cannot be assumed that the results we find for the cases we investigate will necessarily apply in other regions or for blending at other rates. This report should be read as an assessment of the specific cases we have investigated and our findings cannot necessarily be extended to other cases (such as other locations or other rates of blending)"

The full report can be found via the website of the Australian government at this link