Circular Bioeconomy Avenues of Green Hydrogen Production in Sugar and Distillery Industry

Abstract

India’s industrial sectors use approximately 6 million tonnes of hydrogen annually. By 2050, that amount is expected to increase to 28 million tonnes. India wants to produce 80% of its hydrogen from green sources by 2050 in order to cut carbon emissions. In addition to ethanol and bio-CNG, green hydrogen will eventually account for a sizeable portion of India’s energy needs as a cleaner fuel. The sugar and allied industries have a lot of potential for producing green hydrogen. Sugar industry generates excess electricity after captive consumption and nowadays, surplus electricity is sold to the grid. Electricity tariffs are decreasing day by day. The sugar industry is searching for economically feasible alternatives, such as the use of this electricity to produce green hydrogen through water electrolysis. Bagasse which is a carbon-neutral energy source that can also be used to gasify hydrogen. The sugar industry uses anaerobic digestion to produce biogas from press mud cake and spent wash. Hydrogen can be produced from methane or biogas using steam methane reforming. Vasantdada Sugar Institute in Pune has a green hydrogen demonstration plant with a daily capacity of 2 kg of hydrogen, based on water electrolysis technology. The techno-economic analysis of a five-ton-per-day green hydrogen plant that uses water electrolysis appears to be technically feasible with a payback period of less than five years, based on data from a hydrogen demonstration plant.