The Massive Hydrogen Project, That Appears To Be Under The Radar
This page on the SSE Thermal web site, is entitled Aldbrough Gas Storage.
This is the introductory paragraph.
The Aldbrough Gas Storage facility, in East Yorkshire, officially opened in June 2011. The last of the nine caverns entered commercial operation in November 2012.
This page on Hydrocarbons Technology is entitled Aldbrough Underground Gas Storage Facility, Yorkshire.
It gives these details of how Aldbrough Gas Storage was constructed.
The facility was originally planned to be developed by British Gas and Intergen in 1997. British Gas planned to develop Aldbrough North as a gas storage facility while Intergen planned to develop Aldbrough South.
SSE and Statoil became owners of the two projects in 2002 and 2003. The two companies combined the projects in late 2003. Site work commenced in March 2004 and leaching of the first cavern started in March 2005.
The storage caverns were created by using directional drilling. From a central area of the site, boreholes were drilled down to the salt strata located 2km underground.
After completion of drilling, leaching was carried out by pumping seawater into the boreholes to dissolve salt and create a cavern. Natural gas was then pumped into the caverns and stored under high pressure.
Six of the nine caverns are already storing gas. As of February 2012, dewatering and preparation of the remaining three caverns is complete. Testing has been completed at two of these caverns.
The facility is operated remotely from SSE’s Hornsea storage facility. It includes an above ground gas processing plant equipped with three 20MW compressors. The gas caverns of the facility are connected to the UK’s gas transmission network through an 8km pipeline.
Note.
- The caverns are created in a bed of salt about two kilometres down.
- It consists of nine caverns with the capacity to store around 370 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas.
- Salt caverns are very strong and dry, and are ideal for storing natural gas. The technique is discussed in this section in Wikipedia.
As I worked for ICI at Runcorn in the late 1960s, I’m very familiar with the technique, as the company extracted large amounts of salt from the massive reserves below the Cheshire countryside.
This Google Map shows the location of the Aldbrough Gas Storage to the North-East of Hull.
Note.
- The red-arrow marks the site of the Aldbrough Gas Storage.
- It is marked on the map as SSE Hornsea Ltd.
- Hull is in the South-West corner of the map.
This Google Map shows the site in more detail.
It appears to be a compact site.
Atwick Gas Storage
This page on the SSE Thermal web site, is entitled Atwick Gas Storage.
This is said on the web site.
Our Atwick Gas Storage facility is located near Hornsea on the East Yorkshire coast.
It consists of nine caverns with the capacity to store around 325 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas.
The facility first entered commercial operation in 1979. It was purchased by SSE in September 2002.
This Google Map shows the location of the Atwick Gas Storage to the North-East of Beverley.
Note.
- The red-arrow marks the site of the Atwick Gas Storage.
- It is marked on the map as SSE Atwick.
- Beverley is in the South-West corner of the map.
This Google Map shows the site in more detail.
As with the slightly larger Aldbrough Gas Storage site, it appears to be compact.
Conversion To Hydrogen Storage
It appears that SSE and Equinor have big plans for the Aldbrough Gas Storage facility.
This page on the SSE Thermal web site is entitled Plans For World-Leading Hydrogen Storage Facility At Aldbrough.
These paragraphs introduce the plans.
SSE Thermal and Equinor are developing plans for one of the world’s largest hydrogen storage facilities at their existing Aldbrough site on the East Yorkshire coast. The facility could be storing low-carbon hydrogen as early as 2028.
The existing Aldbrough Gas Storage facility, which was commissioned in 2011, is co-owned by SSE Thermal and Equinor, and consists of nine underground salt caverns, each roughly the size of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Upgrading the site to store hydrogen would involve converting the existing caverns or creating new purpose-built caverns to store the low-carbon fuel.
With an initial expected capacity of at least 320GWh, Aldbrough Hydrogen Storage would be significantly larger than any hydrogen storage facility in operation in the world today. The Aldbrough site is ideally located to store the low-carbon hydrogen set to be produced and used in the Humber region.
Hydrogen storage will be vital in creating a large-scale hydrogen economy in the UK and balancing the overall energy system by providing back up where large proportions of energy are produced from renewable power. As increasing amounts of hydrogen are produced both from offshore wind power, known as ‘green hydrogen’, and from natural gas with carbon capture and storage, known as ‘blue hydrogen’, facilities such as Aldbrough will provide storage for low-carbon energy.
I have a few thoughts.
Will Both Aldbrough and Atwick Gas Storage Facilities Be Used?
As the page only talks of nine caverns and both Aldbrough and Atwick facilities each have nine caverns, I suspect that at least initially only Aldbrough will be used.
But in the future, demand for the facility could mean all caverns were used and new ones might even be created.
Where Will The Hydrogen Come From?
These paragraphs from the SSE Thermal web page give an outline.
Equinor has announced its intention to develop 1.8GW of ‘blue hydrogen’ production in the region starting with its 0.6GW H2H Saltend project which will supply low-carbon hydrogen to local industry and power from the mid-2020s. This will be followed by a 1.2GW production facility to supply the Keadby Hydrogen Power Station, proposed by SSE Thermal and Equinor as the world’s first 100% hydrogen-fired power station, before the end of the decade.
SSE Thermal and Equinor’s partnership in the Humber marks the UK’s first end-to-end hydrogen proposal, connecting production, storage and demand projects in the region. While the Aldbrough facility would initially store the hydrogen produced for the Keadby Hydrogen Power Station, the benefit of this large-scale hydrogen storage extends well beyond power generation. The facility would enable growing hydrogen ambitions across the region, unlocking the potential for green hydrogen, and supplying an expanding offtaker market including heat, industry and transport from the late 2020s onwards.
Aldbrough Hydrogen Storage, and the partners’ other hydrogen projects in the region, are in the development stage and final investment decisions will depend on the progress of the necessary business models and associated infrastructure.
The Aldbrough Hydrogen Storage project is the latest being developed in a long-standing partnership between SSE Thermal and Equinor in the UK, which includes the joint venture to build the Dogger Bank Offshore Wind Farm, the largest offshore wind farm in the world.
It does seem to be, a bit of an inefficient route to create blue hydrogen, which will require carbon dioxide to be captured and stored or used.
Various scenarios suggest themselves.
- The East Riding of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire are agricultural counties, so could some carbon dioxide be going to help greenhouse plants and crops, grow big and strong.
- Carbon dioxide is used as a major ingredient of meat substitutes like Quorn.
- Companies like Mineral Carbonation International are using carbon dioxide to make building products like blocks and plasterboard.
I do suspect that there are teams of scientists in the civilised world researching wacky ideas for the use of carbon dioxide.
Where Does The Dogger Bank Wind Farm Fit?
The Dogger Bank wind farm will be the largest offshore wind farm in the world.
- It will consist of at least three phases; A, B and C, each of which will be 1.2 GW.
- Phase A and B will have a cable to Creyke Beck substation in Yorkshire.
- Phase C will have a cable to Teesside.
Creyke Beck is almost within walking distance of SSE Hornsea.
Could a large electrolyser be placed in the area, to store wind-power from Dogger Bank A/B as hydrogen in the Hydrogen Storage Facility At Aldbrough?
Conclusion
SSE and Equinor may have a very cunning plan and we will know more in the next few years.
The Anonymous Widower 