Electrolytic and Photocatalytic Green Hydrogen Production Through Graphene Activity

Hydrogen as a low environmental impact fuel has become crucial in recent years. Today, the global situation of this fuel could be seen as a technological, social, and political challenge. Despite the great effort that has been made and the different methodologies that have been developed to make its production more efficient and cleaner, there are still entry barriers that prevent the use of hydrogen from expanding exponentially. Hydrogen can be obtained from different sources, such as nuclear energy or methane, giving way to the different colors of hydrogen. Of particular importance is green hydrogen, hydrogen produced from renewable energy. Although electrolytic methods are more widely used to produce green hydrogen, photocatalysis can also achieve renewable hydrogen production by sunlight irradiation to photocatalyst compounds immersed in water. Photocatalysts reacts promoting the breakdown of water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. There is a diversity of photocatalysts but those must be able to be structured on a support with a large surface area. Graphene is that support that can help increase hydrogen generation performance, due to its excellent properties, both thermal and electrical. So, graphene could be seen as an important enhancer of the catalytic activity for hydrogen generation. This implies new technological challenges in the design of hydrogen cells, quantifying their environmental impact, and evaluating the economic and commercial implications. In the present research, the comparison of using graphene in electrolytic and photocatalytic processes to produce hydrogen from renewable energy will be carried out. In addition, the life cycles of hydrogen production in both cases will be analyzed, achieving holistic analysis of the two processes, considering the negative and positive externalities of hydrogen production through the two techniques. Finally, the global prospects of hydrogen as a sustainable business and its potential production in Latin America and Mexico has been analyzed and commented.