The Anonymous Widower

From Green Gin To Sustainable Steel, Government Fires Up £140m Hydrogen Push

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Business Green.

The projects are wide ranging.

Green Gin

This is said about gin production by Orkney Distilling Ltd.

The successful projects feature a number of eye-catching initiatives, including the HySpirits project which has been awarded just under £200,000 to explore how the European Marine Energy Centre could work with local gin producer Orkney Distilling Ltd to convert its distillery from using liquid petroleum gas to hydrogen produced using renewable power.

I have been told that making whisky produces carbon dioxide. Does gin?

My source, also said carbon dioxide frpm Scotch whisky production has been used in the growing of soft fruit.

I found this article on The Courier, which is entitled Time To Cut Back On Whisky’s CO2 Emissions and this article on Scottish Capture and Storage, which is entitled Carbon Capture In The Heart Of The City.

Both are worth reading.

This is a paragraph from the second article.

The carbon capture process at this site is relatively simple, because the off gas from fermentation is already very pure in CO2. The process is not about enhancing CO2 concentration, but more about removing impurities. That involves a number of washing stages to remove water and impurities from the gas given off during fermentation, before it is compressed, stored, and eventually transported by road.

The article also says that the distillery produces four tonnes of carbon dioxide per day, which compared to the emissions of Chinese, Indian and United States coal-fired power stations is small beer, but it does show how in some industrial processes capturing the carbon dioxide can be relatively easy in some industrial processes and of a high quality for perhaps using in food and medical products.

But I can’t find a article connecting carbon dioxide from whisky to food production.

The Dolphyn Project

This is said about the Dolphyn Project.

A further £427,000 has been awarded to the Dolphyn project, which plans to mount electrolysers onto floating wind turbine platforms to produce hydrogen. One wind turbine alone has the potential to produce enough low carbon hydrogen to heat around 2,500 homes, fuel over 120-240 buses, or run eight to 12 trains,” the government said

I can’t find much on the Internet about this project, except this extract from this document on the Institution of Engineering and Technology web site, which is called Transitioning To Hydrogen.

The Deepwater Offshore Local Production of Hydrogen
(Dolphyn) project will consider large-scale retrofit
hydrogen production from offshore floating wind
turbines in deep water locations (Figure 19).

This is a partnership project led by ERM with Engie,
Tractebel Engie and ODE. The project looks to
utilise the vast UK offshore wind potential to power
electrolysers to produce hydrogen from the water the
turbines float on. Large 10MW turbines consisting of
desalinisation technology and PEM electrolysers will
feed hydrogen at pressure via a single flexible riser to
a sub-sea manifold with other turbines’ lines. The gas
is then exported back to shore via a single trunkline.
A 20-by-20 array array would have a 4GW capacity,
producing sufficient hydrogen to heat more then 1.5
million homes.

This project may include the offshore wind supply
of hydrogen supported with hydrogen from steam
methane reformation with carbon capture technology.
This project is well aligned to work the ACORN75
project at St Fergus.

Note that the project is talking about gigawatts of energy and providing enough hydrogen to heat millions of homes.

I think that the Dolphyn Project is badly named, as Google thinks you’re looking for projects about aquatic animals.

Gigastack

This is said about Gigastack.

Meanwhile, a consortium featuring Ørsted, ITM Power, and Element Energy is celebrating after securing just shy of £500,000 to help move forward with its Gigastack feasibility study, a six-month project to investigate the potential for delivering bulk, low-cost, and zero-carbon hydrogen.

There’s more here on this page on the ITM Power web site, where this is the first paragraph.

Project to demonstrate delivery of bulk, low-cost and zero-carbon hydrogen through gigawatt scale PEM electrolysis, manufactured in the UK.

As you’d expect from the name, they are looking at creating gigawatts of hydrogen.

Steel

This is said about steel.

The funding awards came as the government also launched a new call for evidence seeking views on how the government should structure and manage a planned £250m Clean Steel Fund. The government said the proposed fund would help the industry embrace clean technologies and move on to “a pathway that is consistent with the UK Climate Change Act” and its new net zero emission goal.

So what has hydrogen got to do with steel?

Search for hydrogen steelmaking on Google and you get lots of articles including this article from the Stockholm Environmental Institute, which is entitled Hydrogen Steelmaking For A Low-Carbon Economy.

This is a paragraph.

In the spring of 2016, three Swedish companies – LKAB (iron ore mining), SSAB (steel manufacturer) and Vattenfall (power utility) – announced their ambition to develop and implement a novel process for fossil-free steel production in Sweden. This process would use hydrogen (instead of coal) for the direct reduction of iron oxide/ore (H-DR), combined with an electric arc furnace (EAF). It would be almost completely fossil-free when the hydrogen is produced from electrolysis of water by use of renewable electricity. The concept is called Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology, or HYBRIT for short.

My knowledge of process engineering, tells me, that even if the Swedes don’t succeed, someone will and here in the UK, we’re ideally placed to take advantage, as we have the wind power to produce the hydrogen.

Conclusion

The future’s bright, the future’s green hydrogen!

, The North Sea can provide us with more than enough hydrogen, so long as the wind blows and there’s water to electrolyse..

August 30, 2019 Posted by AnonW | World | Environment, Green Steel, Hydrogen, Hydrogen Steelmaking, Innovation, Steel, Wind Power | Leave a comment