A Current Perspective on the Renewable Energy Hydrogen Production Process

Hydrogen is a type of clean energy which has the potential to replace the fossil energy for transportation, domestic and industrial applications. To expand the hydrogen production method and reduce the consumption of fossil energy, technologies of using renewable energy to generate hydrogen have been developed widely. Due to the advantages of widespread distribution and various hydrogen production methods, most of the research or review works focus on the solar and biomass energy hydrogen production systems. To achieve a comprehensive acknowledge on the development state of current renewable energy hydrogen production technology, a review on hydrogen production systems driven by solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, ocean and hydropower energy has been presented. The reaction process, energy efficiency, exergy efficiency, hydrogen production rate, economic and environmental performance of these systems have been evaluated. Based on the analysis of these different systems, the challenge and prospects of them are also analyzed.