Engas Global has installed their plug and play containerised hydrogen production, compression, storage and refuelling station at Portsmouth International Port, UK.
In this project Engas Global installed a 35kW electrolyser, a 137bar intermediate pressure hydrogen compressor, 350 bar booster/refuelling compressor, hydrogen refuelling nozzles.
Additional hydrogen production capacity will be added by using Engas Global's modular electrolysers. This is enabling the localised production of hydrogen for the world markets for zero carbon heating, transport fuel for the maritime applications.
The capital cost of conventional electrolysers is very high and it contributes about 70-80% of the overall cost of hydrogen in small to medium scale (5kW-100kW scale) and up to 60-80% in 100kW-1MW scale. Therefore even if the input electricity is free, the cost of hydrogen would still be over £2/kg H2 due to the capital cost for a 1MW electrolyser running continuously for 10 years. But in reality renewable energy powered electrolysers would run for about 30% of the time of the year and often at part load rather than at its full capacity. Duo to this 1/3rd capacity utilisation, the cost of hydrogen due to its capital cost would tend to be around £6/kg H2, which is more than double than the equivalent price of diesel (taxed) in the UK. Therefore the capital cost of hydrogen needs to come down by 70-80% than current prices, that is what Engas Global is offering. As an approximate guide the real capital cost of conventional electrolysers today are :
Green Hydrogen: Electrolysers play a pivotal role to integrate more renewables, heating, and hard to decarbonise transport sectors. As
more and
more renewables are connected to the energy mix, there will be a
widening mismatch of demand vs supply, creating major opportunities for energy
storage to reduce this gap. Surplus electricity is being stored into batteries (which is OK) and it is converted into hydrogen gas electrolysers for
cross cutting applications. Hydrogen production
powered by offshore wind farms, and floating wind turbines for refuelling of
ships brings a clear opportunity for hydrogen. Likewise many large solar PV farms and project developers are exploring the life after 'feed in tariff ' regime, and hydrogen provides a new market to buy cheap electricity from solar PV to upgrade into higher value hydrogen and oxygen gases.
Blue hydrogen: Injecting 20% hydrogen into the natural gas grid by utilities are apparently suitable in many existing gas boilers, gas-cookers and for power generation in existing CCGT plants (combined cycle gas turbines), but for any high purify applications e.g. in fuel cells, this hydrogen needs to be purified again to separate out methane from hydrogen, which will not be cheap at the every point of clean hydrogen use. This is likely to restrict the use of 20% blended hydrogen in transport application. Therefore high purity green hydrogen still needs to be produced locally to run H2 buses, trains, trucks, canal boats, ferries etc. For this reason low cost medium scale electrolysers are going to play a vital role convert stranded, surplus or cheaper electricity locally without major infrastructure cost.
The high capital cost and the lack of availability of suitable hydrogen compressors in small/medium scale influenced the electrolysers to be pressurised (10-20bars), which then increased the number of parts-counts of electrolysers and further adding a significant complexity. There are many other technical issues to deal with in case pressurised electrolysers for intermittent renewable energy powered operation. However hydrogen compressors are will still be needed, because 20bar electrolysers isn't adequate for meaningful H2 storage pressure at 350bar. This combination makes any small/medium scale hydrogen system very expensive due to the individualised high cost of a pressurised-electrolyser and a suitable hydrogen compressor. Engas Global resolved this problem by their own patented ultra low cost atmospheric electrolyser stack and a unique hydrogen compressor.
Engas Global is collaborating with various companies to use their green hydrogen in combined heat and power units e.g. alkaline fuel cells, PEM fuel cells, and solid oxide fuel cells. Engas Global is also collaborating with hydrogen powered internal-combustion engines, hydrogen-boilers and hydrogen-cooker manufacturers.
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Engas Global Ltd, 76 Bennetts Road, Horsham, West Sussex, RH13 5JZ, UK. Company registration number
13271180, VAT Registration number 388707444.