Hydrogen projects
Green hydrogen plant
Green Capital S.A. will build a giant green hydrogen plant. The project will consist of a wind farm of about 400 MW, an 800 MW photovoltaic farm, energy storage facilities, electrolyzers and associated infrastructure. It will produce about 2.2 million MWh per year, and the equivalent of this amount of energy in the form of alternative fuels including green hydrogen and heat (subtracting the energy needed to carry out technological processes). The amount of energy generated will be about 10 times greater than the current largest Polish photovoltaic farm of about 200 MW located in Zwartowo. The investment is currently estimated at EUR 1.28 billion. Green Capital S.A.’s investment will be located in Zulawy in the area of several municipalities. As a result, the heat produced in the process of obtaining hydrogen can be developed before the Tricity agglomeration and heat the residents of Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot, and be used for various technological processes. Analysis of various options for using the green energy that will be produced is currently underway. Among other things, GC already has contracted locations for wind turbines with favorable local zoning, planning and environmental studies, and locations for a photovoltaic farm. It is also in talks with potential technology suppliers, and is analyzing the venture from a logistical perspective.
Experience
For comparison, the cost of producing a similar amount of energy from the planned offshore wind farms will be several tens of percent higher, and currently operating coal-fired power plants in Poland produce electricity at a cost higher by up to 250-300% than our planned investment.
In terms of ecology, our investment also comes out great. For example, the planned wind power plants will produce more energy after just 7 months of operation than it takes to produce them, and about 90% of the materials they will be made of will be fully recyclable, and the remaining 10% will also be usable, but with a more narrowed application.
Hydrogen production in Poland
Poland is the 3rd largest producer of hydrogen in the European Union after Germany and the Netherlands, and we produce 1.3 million tons of it. Unfortunately, it is gray hydrogen, i.e. produced by steam reforming, which produces up to 12 kg of CO2 when producing 1kg of hydrogen, resulting in as much as 15.6 million tons of CO2 being released into the atmosphere.
Check out the colors of hydrogen and their designations.
Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyzer
The use of PEM technology for water electrolysis has a number of advantages, which include the ability to achieve high current density and efficiency, and in addition, the use of deionized water produces hydrogen with a high level of purity. Their disadvantages, however, are the high cost of their constituent materials and the need to use high-purity water, which is also expensive to obtain.
Market structure – hydrogen application
Hydrogen applications – fuel cells
Transformation of hydrogen as an energy carrier
Ammonia production process
Green ammonia is produced with hydrogen separated from water by renewable electricity, or more precisely, when hydrogen ions reach the cathode, they displace the lithium atoms in each lithium nitride molecule, forming NH3.
Haber and Bosch method
The process takes place in three stages:
- nitrogen and hydrogen go into a compressor, where they reach a pressure of several hundred atmospheres,
- the gases react
in a converter containing a catalyst (metallic iron with promoters), - the gases flowing out of the converter are cooled to -50 °C; the purpose of this operation is to condense the ammonia from the post-reaction gas mixture – unreacted nitrogen and hydrogen remain in the gas phase under these conditions.
The lower the temperature and higher the pressure, the higher the equilibrium ammonia content of the mixture. However, lowering the temperature results in a decrease in the rate of ammonia formation, so it is necessary to find the optimum temperature at which an acceptable rate of ammonia formation and efficiency of this reaction are obtained. In industrial practice, this reaction is carried out at pressures ranging from 200 to 400 atmospheres and temperatures varying between 400 and 650 °C.
Project “Żuławy”
The planned 600MW electrolyzer plant will produce 780,000 tons of clean, environmentally neutral hydrogen. The investment will have the capacity to produce H2 at 60% of nationwide production, ensuring that 9,360,000 tons of C02 will not be emitted into the atmosphere annually.
Hydrogen as energy storage
Hydrogen produced during the day with the help of electricity sourced from renewable energy installations can be safely stored in pressurized tanks and then “burned” in fuel cells in the evening, when electricity prices are highest.
Selling hydrogen as a product
Given the growing market for hydrogen in the world and the “EU Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation,” we can focus on selling and distributing it as a product. Depending on the scale of the installation and the customer, we can use transportation by dedicated or existing pipelines* or by TIRs and tanks under 200-350 bar pressure.
Transport and distribution of green ammonia
Ammonia as a product is a raw material whose price is dynamically increasing in value. The reason for the price increase is the closure or reduction of production by European fertilizer factories. This situation is a consequence of the drastic increase in the price of natural gas, which is needed in the process of making fertilizers
Ammonia also allows easier transport of hydrogen, since it condenses at a higher temperature than hydrogen i.e. minus 33 degrees Celsius – and contains 1.7 times more hydrogen per cubic meter than liquefied hydrogen. This allows us to open up to long-distance transportation and deliver it to the most cost-effective places. The raw material will be increasingly needed in Japan, among other places, where the first shipments are already flowing from Saudi Arabia and, in the longer term, Japan expects to import 3 million tons of pure ammonia by 2030, with demand rising to 30-100 million Mg of pure ammonia per year* by 2050.
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