Five projects aiming to produce low-carbon hydrogen at bulk have together been awarded over £28 million in funding by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
- Dolphyn, awarded £3.12 million, and led by Environmental Resources Management, concerns production of hydrogen at scale from offshore floating wind farms in deep water. The ‘green’ hydrogen can be piped to shore. The concept consists of a large-scale floating wind turbine (nominally 10MW) with an integrated water treatment unit and electrolysers for localised hydrogen production. This funding will enable the detailed design of a 2MW prototype system.
- HyNet was awarded £7.48 million. It is led by Progressive Energy, who with Essar, Johnson Matthey, and SNC-Lavalin will deliver a 100,000 Nm3 per hour clean hydrogen production facility for deployment as part of the HyNet Cluster. Production is based on Johnson Matthey’s hydrogen technology which has methane as a feedstock but uses oxygen in the reforming (hydrogen production) process, increasing its efficiency, and includes carbon capture and storage. BEIS says the technology could lower the cost of low carbon hydrogen by 20% and it has become the basis for analysis by it and the Committee on Climate Change’s (CCC) analysis. It previously won government funding in November 2018 and the new tranche will cover engineering design to deliver a ‘shovel ready’ project. HyNet has also received development funding to help industry develop low-carbon fuel alternatives, see here
- Acorn Hydrogen Project led by Pale Blue Dot Energy (PBDE) has won £2.7 million, which will also cover development of Johnson Matthey’s technology. It will cover engineering studies for an advanced reformation process, including assessment for hydrogen production from North Sea Gas, capturing and sequestering the associated CO2 emissions.
- Gigastack was awarded £7.5 million. Led by ITM Power Trading it will demonstrate bulk, zero-carbon electrolytic hydrogen using ITM Power’s polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolysers. The funding will enable ITM Power to work towards developing a system that uses electricity from Orsted’s Hornsea Two offshore wind farm to generate renewable hydrogen for the Phillips 66 Humber Refinery.
- Cranfield University won £7.44 million to develop a low carbon bulk hydrogen supply through pilot scale demonstration of the sorption enhanced steam reforming process, based on a novel technology invented by the Gas Technology Institute (GTI).
Further reading
12 Interviews of Christmas: Deborah Greaves, ORE supergen
Vitol appoints director for CHP project in step towards Humber Zero
CCC tender: what are the pathways for deep industrial decarbonisation?
Climate change minister promises action on hydrogen ‘this year’
ITM Power, Ørsted and Element Energy win BEIS grant aimed at cutting the cost of ‘green’ hydrogen
Eurelectric calls for European leadership on ‘power to gas’ options
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