Green Hydrogen and Lithium sources: toward Green Brazil

The human population is today of 7.5 billion and is still dramatically growing with a high demand for access to technology and transportation. In Brazil, the fossil fuel extraction is still taking a high part of the internal... [ view full abstract ]

The human population is today of 7.5 billion and is still dramatically growing with a high demand for access to technology and transportation. In Brazil, the fossil fuel extraction is still taking a high part of the internal demand to expand the transport industry but the world oil reserves are expected to end in about 46 years. Other primary sources are also economically competitive such as sugar cane producing ethanol. However, the use of such energy sources contributes to high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Brazilian industries are slowly converting their researches in offering other alternatives thanks to governmental pressures and international directives to decrease gas emissions. Electricity from hydraulic or nuclear plants coupled to lithium batteries offers such an alternative, nevertheless environmental impacts and safety problems are still important. In European countries, nuclear centrals are being dismantled and sustainable programs become the priority. In order to reach a sustainable form of transport, fuel cells based on hydrogen are a promising substitute. Rich and poor countries can benefit from the revolutionary technology. Recent discoveries indicated that there are natural hydrogen sources in Brazil; they could potentially become a green solution to generate energy [1] (following the example of the village of Bourakebougou in Mali [2]) and to develop non pollutant vehicles at a larger scale. Some improvements on nanotechnology in order to safely store hydrogen and lithium [3,4] are under progress. This work presents then an economical aspect and the technology of fuel cells and lithium-batteries to reduce considerably GHS emissions.

[1] Alain Prinzhofer and Eric Deville. Hydrogène naturel. La prochaine révolution énergétique ?, Ed. Belin, 2015.

[2] http://africa-me.com/hydrogen-...

[3] C. Arrouvel, S. C. Parker and M. S. Islam, “Lithium insertion and transport in the TiO₂-B anode material: a computational study ”, Chemistry of Materials, 20, 4778-4783 (2009).

[4] C. Arrouvel, T. R. Peixoto, M. E. G. Valerio S. C. Parker,  ¨Lithium migration at low concentration in TiO2 polymorphs¨, Computational and Theoretical Chemistry, 1072, 43-51 (2015).

Keywords: fuel cells, natural hydrogen, lithium batteries, zero gas emissions

Acknowledgment: CA would like to thank Anthony Le Viavant and Hervé Toulhoat for fruitful discussions.