4.1 Technical Principles and Status Quo

Nowadays, hydrogen is used almost exclusively as a material. In 2020, the hydrogen amount used worldwide was around 90 million tonnes. In the last twenty years, the annual demand has increased by 50 %. The hydrogen used today is largely produced from fossil raw materials, apart from a few exceptional cases (see Chapter 2.1).

Far more than 90 % of global hydrogen demand comes from crude oil refining and the chemical industry. At 45 million tonnes, the chemical industry accounts for about half of the total annual hydrogen demand. These 45 million tonnes are in turn mainly allocated to the production of ammonia and methanol. Hydrogen use in the production and processing of metals also accounts for a smaller share. Other, quantitatively insignificant fields of application for hydrogen are the food industry and its use as a coolant. The figure below gives an overview of the shares of the different application fields in global hydrogen consumption.

The technological principles of hydrogen use for the production of ammonia and methanol have already been presented in Chapter 3 and will therefore not be addressed again here. Why oil refineries need large quantities of hydrogen and in which processes it is used there is explained in Section 4.3 of this chapter. In the course of advancing defossilisation (i.e. the substitution of fossil raw materials), green hydrogen will probably be used as a material in further industrial processes. Examples of this are steel making or the production of plastics. These other possible future hydrogen use options are also discussed in the Section 4.3.