It is often associated with nuclear bombs and overzealous hype in the 1970s, but now the idea of hydrogen as a clean energy source is making a comeback in Australia.

In central Queensland, there are now several hydrogen energy projects in the pipeline.

The Australian company Northern Oil is set to build the first hydrogen fuel cell of its kind in Queensland at its pilot biofuels refinery in Gladstone in early 2019.

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Hydrogen is a carrier of energy Renewable hydrogen is produced by purifying seawater, then separating the hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis

Renewable hydrogen is produced by purifying seawater, then separating the hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis The process of separation is powered by solar or wind energy

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The hydrogen becomes a vehicle for storing renewable energy such as solar or wind It is converted into transportable forms for export

Announcing it would bring the European technology to Australia this week, the company's Troy Collins described this as "no small feat".

"It's something everybody in Gladstone should be very proud of," he said.

The State Government has also been in talks with Japanese experts about building a solar-to-hydrogen plant in central Queensland that would export hydrogen gas out of Gladstone's port.

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Hydrogen alone is not actually a fuel source in itself — it is carrier of energy.

Usually it is produced by splitting water molecules, H2O, into hydrogen and oxygen atoms through the process of electrolysis.

It can then be condensed into a liquid fuel source, which can be used to power cars in a similar way to diesel, or it can be used to generate conventional electricity.

RMIT University's renewable energy hydrogen systems expert Professor John Andrews said this comes with environmental benefits.

"At the point of consumption in a fuel cell the only by-products are water, which is no problem environmentally, and electricity," Professor Andrews said.

Northern Oil will use hydrogen to generate electricity, but the way it will go about doing this will be particularly novel in Australia.



The company's pilot plant in Gladstone turns waste products such as old tyres and weeds into a renewable version of a traditional fossil fuel.

It needs hydrogen to do this, and until now has been buying it on the open market, but that is expensive.

Instead of buying hydrogen, Mr Collins said the company has found technology to turn its plant's waste gases — which would usually be emitted into the atmosphere — into a cheaper source of hydrogen.

Some of that homemade hydrogen will be pumped back into its refinery processes and the excess will generate electricity in a fuel cell to run the refinery, making the company's whole site self-sustainable.

"It's part of the circular economy," Mr Collins said.

The company's hydrogen power generation unit is expected to be sized between 200kW and 400kW.

"There is definitely an innovative aspect there and breaking new ground in setting up in Australia," Professor Andrews said.

It will follow a project at Griffith University in Brisbane, where a building has been run with a 60kW hydrogen fuel cell since 2013.

Sorry, this video has expired Farming hydrogen with solar power

The project joins another larger proposal for Port Lincoln in South Australia, announced earlier this year.

Other hydrogen proposals include a solar and wind hydrogen plant for South Australia's mid-north and a world-first trial to use brown coal to make hydrogen in Victoria's east.

The Queensland Government also set aside $750,000 in last month's budget to support the investigation of producing and supplying hydrogen at a competitive price to alternative energy sources.

Professor Andrews said it was promising that there had been so many schemes recently announced but the devil was in the detail when it came to each project's environmental benefits.

For instance, Northern Oil's pilot refinery is creating biofuels that still emit pollution into the atmosphere, and the Victorian proposal involves digging up coal to create a fuel source.

"It is always important to ask what the overall net greenhouse impact is of the overall system," Professor Andrews said.

"Clearly, we want there to be an overall greenhouse net reduction or there isn't much point in doing it."

Toyota has its own portable refuelling station for its Mirai hydrogen prototype cars in Australia. ( Supplied: Toyota )

Professor Andrews said there had also been several breakthroughs in transporting hydrogen and using it to power vehicles that made his entire field quite exciting.

"I think the future lies in using the pure hydrogen fuel in a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle," he said.

"There's been quite a change in terms of the interest in hydrogen in the past five years in Australia and internationally. I think the interest is on the rise."

Yet he was cautious to predict an energy miracle or a "hydrogen economy" that could supply all the world's energy needs, as was first touted by scientists in the 1970s.

"We're moving to see that hydrogen has particular attributes [and] looking for where those niche applications are," he said.

"The challenge is to find practical cost effective safe ways to integrate hydrogen into our energy system."