Green hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle technology is a credible option to decarbonise vehicles, however the production and distribution of hydrogen is currently high cost. Additionally, the heat produced during electrolysis is in theory high enough to support the decarbonisation of district heating but is typically wasted. Addressing both needs in an uncoordinated manner would likely lead to inefficient investment in networked infrastructure. Taking an integrated approach to decarbonising heat and transport provides an opportunity to improve network usage and lower the cost of hydrogen production.
In order to evaluate the potential benefits of waste heat from electrolysers and the integration of this with other applications, a detailed desktop analysis will be conducted to understand and articulate the work already done in this regard.
Benefits
There is a lot of ongoing work to identify the most effective route to meet net zero in the UK and this project is one of many projects to evidence the major or minor role hydrogen will have in different scenarios. Repurposing the UK gas networks with hydrogen to support the challenge of the climate change act has the potential to save £millions with minimal gas customer disruption verses alternative decarbonisation solutions.
Learnings
Outcomes
The project was able to achieve various outcomes through the three sections/ work packages. The most notable outcomes are as follows:
The project analysed the technical design and functioning of a hybrid hydrogen hub along with opportunities to capture and integrate the electrolysis by-products for various use cases.
The project identified various challenges of operating the hub in the UK from the perspective of a) safety risks and regulatory barriers for storage of onsite hydrogen b) integration of waste heat into district heating systems c) availability of renewable electricity for the electrolysis process & d) consistency of electrical supply to maintain optimal operating conditions for the electrolyser stacks.
The project successfully identified off-takers, use cases and industries for selling the electrolysis by-products i.e. waste heat and oxygen to exploit the revenue stacking opportunity associated with the hub.
The project explored several locations within the WWU region with excess heat demand, industrial waste heat supply, renewable sources of energy, existing network of district heating systems and off-takers of oxygen. These locations can be studied in further work to identify areas with overlapping facilities that can be shortlisted to develop the first hydrogen hub.
The project also successfully analysed the industrial and electrolyser waste heat integration in the Port of Rotterdam through the Warmtelinq project. The project identified two more case studies within Europe to draw learnings for the integrated hydrogen hub with regard to transportation and waste heat integration.
Lessons Learnt
The primary objective of the project was to identify decarbonisation opportunities for the transport and district heating sector by moving away from fossil fuel and gas-based systems. The hydrogen hub provides a great opportunity to decarbonise these sectors in a cost-effective manner through a revenue-stacking approach that uses waste heat which has been unutilised so far.
To further exploit the recommendations from the NIA project, the SIF discovery project provided a great opportunity to understand the on-ground challenges of integrating waste heat into the district heating system. Understanding these challenges would require interviewing the heat network developers to analyse the technical, commercial and regulatory barriers while integrating these systems.
The project identified various locations within the WWU region with excess heat demand, existing district heating networks and available renewable sources of energy. These locations will need to be analysed further to identify a possible overlapping area which would be suitable for developing a hydrogen hub. Once a pilot project is developed in one of the shortlisted areas, the hub design can be replicated in several other appropriate locations across the WWU region and the rest of the country. Thus, scaling up the hydrogen hub design across the country will help more customers access low-carbon and cost-effective transport fuel and heat solutions across the UK.
