Industrial Hydrogen Accelerator

Project Description

This project proposes to develop an innovative, on-site, end-to-end and scalable green hydrogen production system to support fuel switching in UK Ceramic and other manufacturing industries, with potential for knowledge gain in the technology. Decarbonising the Ceramics industry by switching to green hydrogen will contribute to the UK meeting its CO2 mitigation targets and achieving the goals set out in the UK Hydrogen Strategy 2021. However, the production routes for green hydrogen, mainly through the electrochemical process, are expensive at up to £4.8/kg (Zhang et al 2022. Energy& Environ. Mater. 0, 1-9; Wang et al 2019. ACS Catal.9, 10780-10793), and uncompetitive due to the limited efficiency of the state-of-the-art (SOTA) technologies, including catalytic materials, reactor design and system integration. In addition, the use of fresh water in electrochemical processes puts pressure on available freshwater resources (9-ton freshwater/1-ton H2 -Ghavam et al 2021: Frontiers in Energy Research, 9, Article 580808), while fossil-based routes are associated with high CO2 emissions (Winter et al 2021. Joule 5, 300-315) and thus unsustainable. To overcome these limitations, it is important to develop a novel green hydrogen production technology that is cost-competitive, sustainable and efficient in material and energy use.

Our project, PRO-GREEN H2, will design an end-to-end system for onsite/on-demand green hydrogen production, delivery and use that integrates four key subsystems: non-thermal plasma desalination, non-thermal (NTP)–catalysis ammonia production, catalytic membrane reactor (CMR) for ammonia conversion to hydrogen, and on-site fuel switching adaptations (i.e., H2 delivery infrastructure and ceramic burners using up to 100% H2). The subsystems will be tested and validated via techno-economic analysis and process modelling that will inform the design and simulation testing of the overall system, at prototype, demonstration scale (equivalent to 3 MW) and large-/commercial scale equivalent to 30 MW of green hydrogen. With seawater and nitrogen as feedstock, the proposed system can be located at the point of use, thereby eliminating the need for expensive product transport network.

Lucideon’s ceramic manufacturing industry clients have indicated that the distribution of hydrogen is a key barrier for switching from natural gas (CH4) to H2 fuel and that from a health and safety perspective, they would want to store as little hydrogen as possible and ideally have an on-site hydrogen generation system which this proposal addresses. Our on-site/on-demand system will leverage commercial hydrogen delivery/distribution infrastructure that is widely used by chemical manufacturing industries.