Project Summary

How your project meets the aim of the specific SIF Innovation Challenge

This project directly addresses all the scope challenges under the Zero Emissions Transport Theme. Successfully demonstrating a national transmission system (NTS) level deblending technology enables large scale hydrogen distribution through the NTS for hydrogen refuelling stations (HRS). The successful roll out of the technology will accelerate hydrogen mobility roll-out by enabling HRS to access a secure hydrogen supply from low-cost, large scale, production facilities before 100% hydrogen NTS. Refuelling from the NTS is particularly well suited to hydrogen refuelling for heavy haulage, trains, buses and shipping, where large hydrogen demands can present challenges for hydrogen distribution by road or locally based, electricity intensive electrolysers.

How the energy network innovation evolved

The technologies required for gas separation, compression and purification have been developed for industrial processes and are in use today. However, the scale of these systems is much larger than expected for the gas network applications and therefore costly to deploy. This project will develop the first of a kind deblending facility that applies to the NTS's specific challenges, building on existing technologies to separate hydrogen and natural gas to the two purities required by targeted users. Developed to handle the input flow and blend variation experienced in the NTS, while still maintaining product purity and providing a mobile cost-effective solution that can be migrated around the NTS.

How your project has evolved from alpha to beta phase

The primary goal of the Alpha phase was to engage with and sub-contract equipment suppliers to the project team and to allow basic system designs to be completed ahead of the Beta stage. The alpha phase was also utilised to advance plans for the Beta phase demonstration, such as developing gas profiles for system testing, further discussing integration of the demonstration into the FutureGrid facility and establishing hydrogen vehicle availability for refuelling at the site.

The perception of this new market has developed throughout Alpha and into the Beta application, we now have a great understanding of the technology and equipment needed to facilitate the demonstration and the outputs we hope to achieve from them. Additionally, in conversations with multiple global transmission owners and companies looking to provide refuelling sites in the UK and wider there is a growing amount of excitement and interest in the project and its results.

The range of key users

The key users of the Deblending innovation will be vehicle owners requiring a high purity supply of hydrogen for zero emission vehicles. The vehicles will range from passenger cars up to 44 tonne Heavy Goods Vehicles with ownership ranging from private individuals to large fleet operators. The needs of the customers are :-

• Access to a nationwide network of hydrogen refuelling stations that can dispense high purity hydrogen
• Reliable supply of hydrogen at 350 and 700 bar pressure
• Cost competitive price of hydrogen throughout the country (low transportation costs)

The HyNTS Deblender would enable local supply of high-pressure, fuel cell grade hydrogen, from the gas transmission grid and a uniform cost of hydrogen across the UK network.

Experience & capabilities

The project is led by a team with complementary skill sets needed to develop and deliver the project in realistic operation conditions:

• National Gas Transmission PLC, the NTS system operator, provide the depth of understanding of the requirements of NTS gas users and blending challenges from their existing blending and deblending studies.
• Element Energy, are a consultancy practice with extensive expertise in the hydrogen energy sector and project development and management.
• Element 2 are a developer of hydrogen refuelling stations, who will provide insights into the hydrogen supply requirements for vehicles and the needs of the vehicle owner/operators, the team are also very well connected to the hydrogen vehicle market.
• HyET Hydrogen (HyET) are our supplier of gas separation equipment. HyET submitted a strong application to the Alpha tender process, proposing a system using electrochemical separation and electrochemical compression and purification technologies.
• Gas Distribution Networks (GDNs) -- All of the UK's GDNs; Cadent, SGN, NGN and WWU join the project to ensure alignment between the mobility development projects as seen in the additional project plan appendix.

The potential users of your innovation and how your project addresses their needs

The output of this project will have potential user communities, the first will be the companies who wish to own and operate hydrogen refuelling stations directly connected to the NTS and in which case this innovation will provide the evidence base that the technology can be provide the required high purity hydrogen. Secondly this innovation will be used by the hydrogen vehicle owners as well, whether it is car, HGV, bus, train, or marine these users will benefit from the innovation giving them access to a greater number of refuelling stations across the country.

Innovation Justification

Most relevant state of the art product

Electrochemical hydrogen extraction and purification is an innovative technology on its own. It uses a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) that can actively extract hydrogen molecules from any gas mixture by dissociating the hydrogen molecule into protons by using a catalyst. When transported to the other side of the PEM, the two protons are recombined again to form a hydrogen molecule.

This technology has one key demonstration to date which is in the US for the gas distribution company -- SoCalGas, the scale is 10kg/day of purified hydrogen provided at 450bar. The testing of this equipment has been between 3 and 15% hydrogen/natural gas mix and at between 5 and 30 bar. For this example, the focus was on extracting all the hydrogen from the feed during 2-stage extraction.

Innovative compared to the most relevant state of the art product

The proposal outlined in this application will take the current state of the art project and demonstrate its operation in a transmission scenario taking the known 30 bar operation to a feed gas of 70 bar which is representative of the UK gas transmission network. The project is also proposing a significant scaling of the hydrogen output, going from a previous 10kg/day to a bulk separation of 200kg/day and a purified hydrogen level of 40kg/day. To do this the layout and design of the technology is different from before increasing efficiency by having the bulk separation units in parallel. Finally, the equipment will be put through a series of tests, altering the temperature, flow, pressures and compositions of the feed gas to fully understand how the equipment will cope with variable transmission conditions.

How your project goes beyond incremental innovation

The designs and proposals for this application are not another iteration of the same technology that has been in the field for decades, but a completely new principle and application. As highlighted above our proposal is looking to scale up the purified hydrogen amounts by 300% to 40 kg/day and the bulk separation to 200kg/day, address the challenges of working with high pressures up to 70 bar, re-design the layout to improve efficiency and challenge the whole setup with a series of variability tests.

Readiness Levels

With a view of the electrochemical separation technology and a gas transmission network the current commercial readiness level (CRL) would be 1 and the integration readiness level (IRL) would also be 1. This recognises that there are no examples of this technology currently in operation connected to a gas transmission network. Following the successful demonstration of the technology at the offline test facility the CRL will be 2 'Commercial trials of the technology on a small scale' and IRL will be 7 'Integration of technologies verified and validated'.

Project Scale

One of the key criteria for choosing HyET Hydrogen's electrochemical separation technology for demonstration was the ability to scale as required. If a greater flow is needed, then another module is simply added to meet the requirements. It was decided to demonstrate 200kg/day bulk separated and 40kg/day purified as this displays a significant increase on the current state. Scaling up further is possible by adding additional units, however it was viewed that this would add cost to the proposal but not a comparative increase in knowledge gained or benefit.

Why your project cannot be funded elsewhere within the price control or considered as part of the business-as-usual activities

The project will develop and demonstrate transmission deblending systems for transport applications on the FutureGrid test site. The system cannot be adopted into business as usual until there are significant hydrogen blends in the NTS. The first use of the system in BAU is in-line with Project Union which is due to begin construction in 2026, waiting to develop the system will delay the ability for refuelling applications to link to the gas networks and delay the transition.

Why your project does not undermine the development of competitive markets

Ultimately this project is demonstrating technology to separate a blended transmission gas feed for the transport sector and if proven to be successful could open the market for other technologies to be developed and implemented onto the gas network. Whilst the demonstration will be through the selected supplier(s) there will be no guarantee of work in rolling the technology out so a competitive market will be created for implementation onto the NTS

Counterfactual solutions

Alternative approaches that were considered in the Alpha stage include more commercially available technologies such as membranes and pressure swing adsorption however these were discounted as there was not a significant level of innovation in that technology, the overall land footprint was too large for a commercial scale and the pressure of either the hydrogen or natural gas is lost in the separated gas.

Benefits

Facilitating the uptake of hydrogen across the UK by the 2030s, through distributing hydrogen from centralised facilities to offtakers across the country

• The UK Government has set a target to deploy 10 GW of low carbon hydrogen by 2030. To help to reach this ambition, large-scale hydrogen production facilities are planned to be deployed within the coming decade, such as Gigastack, HyNET and Acorn.
• Blending hydrogen into the NTS, with the capability to de-blend hydrogen to high purity at NTS offtake points, would create an opportunity to use existing NTS infrastructure to distribute hydrogen produced at these large-scale facilities to hydrogen offtakers across the UK (often long distances from centralised facilities) at low cost. Cost evidence is given below.
• Purification of ~100% Network Hydrogen for fuel cell applications will be important in enabling repurposed assets to carry hydrogen for transport applications. It is likely as hydrogen gas moves through the existing network it will pick up impurities that will need to be removed prior to use in fuel cell applications to prevent failure.

Enabling the introduction of a new service of mobility fuels supply through the NTS, to accelerate de-carbonisation of transport and reduce dependency upon fossil fuel imports

• Blending and de-blending of hydrogen through the NTS could introduce a new market for the gas transmission system, by supplying hydrogen to large-scale refuelling hubs. A vision of these refuelling hubs would be to supply hydrogen to large vehicles such as heavy-duty road vehicles, trains and maritime vessels. Large vehicles of this type are in some cases are in some cases more difficult to electrify directly using battery technology, so blending/de-blending could play a key role in decarbonising mobility.
• In addition, low carbon hydrogen produced in the UK to replace imported fossil fuels would represent a step towards energy independence and security.
• Cost analysis in the Alpha phase suggests that, by accessing low-cost hydrogen from large-scale facilities and distributing hydrogen effectively over long distances, fuel cell purity hydrogen could be supplied to large-scale 5,000 kg H2/day refuelling hubs at a cost of between c. £6.54-£7.66/kg H2. This would allow delivery of hydrogen via de-blending by 2030 at prices competitive with current fossil fuels, particularly for cars and buses (see below).

Delivery of hydrogen at costs highly competitive with alternative supply options, and providing a number of other practical and environmental benefits

• Alpha phase cost analysis modelled hydrogen supply costs of de-blending to a 5,000 kg H2/day refuelling hub against alternatives, in particular distribution by compressed gas hydrogen (CG H2) tube trailer and on-site electrolysis using grid imports.
• In the central case of CG H2 delivery for a refuelling station sited 200 km by road from a "regional production facility", the final supply cost to consumers is estimated at £8.34/kg H2. Depending on the blend profile on the NTS, a saving to consumers of between £0.68-£1.61/kg H2 is estimated.
• In regions of the country where regional hydrogen production facilities are more geographically spread, and tube trailer distances may be further than 200 km, savings to customers may be even greater.
• Hydrogen supply by blending/de-blending is also estimated to provide a saving of between £0.74-£1.67/kg H2 in comparison to on-site electrolysis.
• De-blending offers an additional benefit over tube trailer supply of hydrogen by removing the need for multiple hydrogen deliveries per day. A refuelling hub at the scale to dispense 5,000 kg H2/day (enough to refuel up to 200 heavy goods vehicles each day) would require up to 8 deliveries daily. The equivalent volume of diesel could be supplied by a 36,000 litre tanker arriving once every two days. As well as adding significant logistical challenges at the HRS site, tube trailer delivery would add significant local traffic. To supply the demand of hydrogen for all UK FCEV vehicles by 2030 (as estimated by UK H2Mobility), diesel delivery trucks would potentially emit over 95 kt CO2e each year.
• De-blending would also benefit from supply from multiple hydrogen production facilities connected to the NTS, unlike both tube trailer delivery and on-site electrolysis. This may improve the reliability of hydrogen supply to mobility customers. Refuelling stations may also require smaller buffer storage as a result, thereby reducing the overall levelized hydrogen cost further and having safety implications by reducing the volumes of hazardous gas stored on-site.