Green Hydrogen Production: Progress, Challenges and Proposed Solutions

Recently, global interest in hydrogen as a powerful, promising and clean source of energy has increased. Green hydrogen production (GHP) is considered one of the most important modern projects worldwide, as it is the way to achieve a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. GHP plays a major role to improve public health. There are several methods for producing or harvesting green hydrogen, the most famous of which are: 1) The electrolysis of water using a proton exchange membrane and metal foam at low temperatures and 2) Flash Joule Heating (FJH) method for heating plastic waste at high temperatures using low-carbon emissions technology. However, both methods still suffer from some difficulties. This calls for the need to search for scientific solutions to make hydrogen available at reasonable prices. While the first method is considered better for producing high-purity hydrogen compared to the second method, it faces challenges in collecting hydrogen on the surface of the negative electrode (cathode) in a suitable manner (catalyst) to collect it in a less expensive way. While the second method is considered the cheapest, but it is complex and requires very high temperatures to produce graphene with hydrogen harvesting. Graphene can be used in the manufacture of digital processors, electronic cells and conductors. Green hydrogen is used sparingly in some applications such as automotive research and some metallurgical and chemical industries. The paper focused on monitoring and understanding the current situation and challenges to provide proposed solutions for enhancing hydrogen production based on advanced engineering materials and metrology techniques. These solutions aim to develop the cathode material and its surface in the first method. Furthermore, the use of SEM and AFM in both methods was proposed to improve the characterization process of both the cathode material with its surface and GHP. Adopting such approach is essential to contribute for reducing the costs of GHP with the aim of providing clean and sustainable energy, in addition to enhancing the role of doctors in performing their medical duties towards raising the level of health awareness of community members and maximizing the treatment and recovery of patients in a healthy environment.