Recharge
Summary
A cash injection of €30m from the German government will enable work to begin on the 30MW pilot phase of the ambitious 700MW Westküste 100 green hydrogen project.
The newly formed joint venture, H2 Westküste GmbH — comprising EDF Deutschland, Ørsted and independent oil refinery Raffinerie Heide — will now begin work on building a 30MW electrolyser powered by renewable energy. The world’s largest electrolyser in operation today is a 20MW unit in Japan.
If the five-year, €89m pilot at the Heide refinery in Schleswig-Holstein proves to be successful, the joint venture aims to move forward with its groundbreaking 700MW cross-sector project.
A 700MW electrolyser — probably powered by offshore wind — would split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen would be sold to the nearby Holcim cement plant for use as “oxyfuel”, with the waste heat from the electrolysis process sold to a nearby district heating system, thus creating additional revenue streams. Most electrolysis projects simply release the heat and oxygen into the air.
A large proportion of the green hydrogen will be combined with carbon dioxide captured from the cement plant to produce synthetic methanol, which would then be refined into carbon-neutral synthetic kerosene (ie, aviation fuel), for use at the nearby Hamburg airport. Some of the green hydrogen would also be used to power local transport.
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