Harvesting hydrogen from steel

Jamshedpur, India-based Tata Steel’s research and development department has developed a way to produce hydrogen using steel byproducts.

In a process called hydrogen harvesting, water is sprayed over slag heated to 1,600 degrees Celsius (2,912 degrees Fahrenheit) to split the hydrogen and oxygen.

The chief of Tata Steel’s R&D department estimated the process yields up to 70 percent hydrogen.

Tata Steel has taken the first step to patent the extraction process.

The company plans to use the hydrogen in commercial trials starting in December at a ferro-alloy plant Tata owns in the Bay of Bengal. Tata expects to harvest hydrogen using slag available at the plant and substitute it for oil.

In doing so, the company hopes to cut costs and reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the plant.

Other groups have been working on techniques to extract hydrogen from water. At the REMC national convention held in February, Indiana-based AlGalCo showed off an aluminum-gallium alloy that could serve as a catalyst for extracting hydrogen from water (see Researchers and industry optimistic about hydrogen from aluminum).

Earlier this year, researchers at Pennsylvania State University also introduced an admittedly-inefficient process of extracting hydrogen from water based on a plant system (see Mimicking plants to get hydrogen from water).

The sixth largest steel producer in the world, Tata Steel is an arm of the Mumbai-based Tata Group, also parent company to Tata Motors.

Last month, Tata Motors started selling its shares in Tata Steel to finance its $2.3 billion acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover, which took place in March.