Research and development efforts will be focussed on the generation of green hydrogen from different feedstocks through a variety of processes. Intermittent power generation from wind, and solar photovoltaics, can render the produced power not dispatchable. Storage of energy during high solar radiation intensity periods, and/or high wind speed periods, and dispatch when needed can be achieved by storing the energy in hydrogen.
Excess power will be used to electrolyse water, and later the recombination of hydrogen with oxygen can produce the energy needed to generate electricity through the employment of fuel cells.
Although hydrogen burns with zero emissions, it is often produced in a way that creates GHG emissions, but there is a lot of potential to reduce the GHG impact based on the way it is created. Hydrogen can be produced with low or no carbon emissions, but selecting the best hydrogen generation technology often depends on the application.
By incorporating carbon capture and/or carbon sequestration in a cost-effective manner, green hydrogen can be generated from hydrocarbons for large scale or smaller distributed production. The process of creating hydrogen via electrolysis will be pursued to store renewable electricity from wind or solar power in a form that will provide dispatchable lower-carbon energy to consumers that could be used for remote and back-up power generation.
Under the proposed Namibia Green Hydrogen Research Institute hosted at UNAM, we plan to host several researchers, students (postgraduate and post-doc) under this research umbrella. As a result, a hydrogen fuel cell prototype based on several materials that can be tested in dispatchable electricity generation from stored hydrogen, will be produced. The feasibility study in these areas can range from the analysis on the application of fuel cells in power generation, the environmental impact associated with the emission of excessive water vapour in the atmosphere, etc. To achieve these initiatives, materials and equipment need to be procured for this research.