15 July 2020 / www.theengineer.co.uk
giant
Whilst much
has been
made of UK
engineering’s
response to
the Covid-19
crisis, there’s
a growing sense that this impressive
mobilisation of the manufacturing base
is merely a dress-rehearsal for an even
more daunting challenge: reducing the
UK’s carbon emissions to nothing by
2050.
Because whilst politicians and
businesses across the economy will all
have a role to play, the quest to meet
the net zero emissions targets that are
enshrined in British law is first and
foremost an engineering challenge
that will require unprecedented levels
of innovation in almost every area of
energy technology: from carbon capture
and storage, to modular nuclear reactors,
battery technology, offshore wind, solar
and more.
There is, quite clearly, no silver bullet.
But one energy source that’s considered
an increasingly vital component of
this low carbon future, and in which
the UK is very well-placed to develop a
competitive edge, is hydrogen.
Abundant, versatile, energy dense
and clean at point of use, hydrogen
has long attracted a vocal band of
evangelists, who have trumpeted the gas’
potential for heating our homes, fuelling
our transport and generally reshaping
our energy economy.
The problem is that the bulk of
the hydrogen currently used is socalled
“brown hydrogen” derived from
fossil fuels using processes that the
International Energy Authority (IEA)
says is responsible for around 830
million tonnes of CO2 emissions per
year.
Clearly, if it’s to truly deliver on its
undoubted potential, cleaner methods of
production are essential, and the quest
to develop this missing part of the jigsaw
is a major driver of innovation.
Initially, this is likely to fuel greater
investment in blue hydrogen production,
where carbon capture and storage (CCS)
is used to capture the CO2 produced by
existing processes.
But it’s the developments in green
hydrogen production - using giant
renewably powered electrolysers to extract hydrogen from
water - that are perhaps most exciting of all.
Hydrogen produced in this way could – it’s claimed - play
a key role in decarbonising industrial processes, domestic
heating and transport, whilst offering an elegant method of
storing excess renewable energy.
One of the UK’s pioneers of green hydrogen production
is Sheffield based electrolyser manufacturer ITM power,
which produces scaleable modular PEM (polymer electrolyte
membrane) electrolyser systems for a range of applications.
The company - which is in the process of moving into a new
1GW per annum facility claimed to be the largest of its kind in
the world - is perhaps best known for its network of renewably
powered hydrogen filling stations which can be found on
Shell forecourts around the UK. But it’s now also involved in
a number of major projects exploring the feasibility of green
hydrogen production for industrial applications.
One of the key initiatives here is Gigastack, an ITM led
project, that has received £7.5m funding through the UK
government’s hydrogen supply competition to explore how
the costs of electrolytic hydrogen for industrial use could be
reduced.
The project is exploring the development of a system that
will use electricity from Orsted’s Hornsea Two 1.4 GW offshore
wind farm to power giant electrolysers at a substation in
Humberside that will in turn generate renewable hydrogen for
the Phillips 66 refinery.
ITM has already developed designs for a modular 5MW
electrolyser stack as part of initial feasibility study and as part
of the second phase will conduct a front end engineering study
on the development and integration of a 100MW electrolyser
made of up 20MW modules.
The company is also involved in an
effort to build what will be the world’s
largest PEM electrolyser at Shell’s
Rhinleand Refinery in Wesseling,
Germany.
The five year REFHYNE project
which kicked off in 2018, will see a
10MW electrolyser, consisting of two
5MW modules, integrated into refinery
processes such as desulphurisation and
hydrocracking. The system is expected to
supply around 1300 tonnes of hydrogen
per year, which is around one per cent of
the plant’s annual hydrogen needs.
Once up and running, the facility
will become the largest green hydrogen
production facility in the world,
overtaking the 6MW H2Future plant at
steelmaker Voestalpine’s site in Linz,
Austria.
For ITM CEO Graham Cooley the
opportunities presented by this market
alone are huge: “The biggest initial
opportunity is decarbonising the existing
market for hydrogen,” he told The
Engineer. “If you just decarbonise 10 per
cent of the hydrogen used in refineries
that is a market size of 90 billion Euros.”
But whilst ITM Power is primarily
focused on driving the market through
industrial applications, others – such as
The PosHYdon project will see the installation
of green hydrogen production facilities on
Neptune Energy’s Q13a oil and gas platform
there’s no reason why the
whole of UK heat couldn’t be
provided by green hydrogen
/www.theengineer.co.uk