Engas Global's hydrogen System at Portsmouth International Port, UK

Engas Global has installed their plug and play containerised hydrogen production, compression, storage and refuelling station at Portsmouth International Port, UK.

SHAPE UK (Shipping, Hydrogen and Port Eco-system) under the Clean Maritime Demonstration Call (Department for Transport/ Innovate 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. 

About us

Shape UK- Seminar

H2 system demonstration

Problems we solve:
Barrier 1:
The capital cost of electrolysers is a limiting factor of hydrogen economy.

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 :

  • £1500/kW for 20-30MW scale electrolysers but they require significant additional cost on infrastructure to deliver vast amount of electricity and to discharge vast amount of hydrogen via pipeline.
  • £2500-£3000/kW for 1-10MW scale electrolysers still requires large infrastructure.
  • £3000-£4000/kW for 100kW-1MW scale; these electrolysers can have many distributed applications of solar hydrogen for heating and refuelling, but the cost of hydrogen (£/kg) becomes prohibitive compared to diesel for any commercial use.
  • £4000-£7000/kW for 50-100kW scale electrolysers can find also opportunities but the cost of hydrogen £/kg) from such hydrogen is extremely unattractive.
  • £7000-£10,000/kW for 1-10kW scale electrolyser subject to conditions. These prices are extremely high and it can find its use mainly in laboratories as a replacement of expensive hydrogen cylinders.
  • The cost of hydrogen delivered in cylinders is about £50-135/kg H2 excluding the rental cost of cylinders. Reference: BOC).

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.

Barrier 2: Lack of suitable hydrogen compressors is stifling localised H2 production.

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 disruptive solutions

Stack only atmospheric electrolyser

Engas is building unique stack only electrolysers by integrating with their own hydrogen compressors. This approach will enable low cost hydrogen production and compression and use onsite.

Gas cleaning hydrogen compressor

A unique hydrogen compressor capable of scrubbing KOH  from hydrogen and then drying hydrogen apart from also compressing hydrogen in a single step operating at close to 98% volumetric efficiency unlike any piston/diaphragm type compressors. 

Use of hydrogen in fuel-cells, ICE & gas boilers

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. 

Services

Engas Global is working towards serving the following sectors:

1. Supplying green hydrogen and oxygen produced by an existing electrolysers to the market.

2. Onsite production of hydrogen and oxygen by its own electrolysers to add further capacity the existing one.

Hydrogen in comparison with others

Hydrogen has the highest specific energy density (kWh/kg) than any other fuel apart from nuclear fuel. But hydrogen has very low volumetric energy density (kWh/lt), than most liquid and gaseous fuels. Therefore hydrogen needs to be compressed to increase its volumetric energy density. 
  • For every 1kg hydrogen produced, 7.8kg oxygen is also produced as a free by-product.
  • A typical electrolyser takes about 50-60kWh electricity and 11.2litre de-ionised water to produce 1 kg hydrogen and 7.8kg oxygen.
  • The electrolyser operates at about 70-80% electrical efficiency depending current density.
  • Large electrolysers can also generate heat via a heat exchanger as 10-20% of its rated electrical capacity.
  • 1kg hydrogen is equivalent to about 3.78litre of diesel on energy content basis.
A comparison chart between hydrogen, natural gas and LPG is also provided below (first chart). Another chart (right hand side) comparing different hydrogen storage systems each with 1 kWh of stored energy for 8h of operation is shown below.