Reliance to produce blue hydrogen for $ 1.2 - 1.5 per kg from its Jamnagar refinery, plans biomass-fed green hydrogen plants

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) says it will produce blue hydrogen at $ 1.2 - 1.5 a kg at its Jamnagar oil refinery, but re-purposing its gasifier assets. 

The gasifier assets are to be transfered to a subsidiary, Reliance Syngas, at a valuation of Rs 30,000 crore. 

In an investor presentation of Feb 11, Reliance said, "with CCUS, RIL can be one of the largest producers of blue hydrogen globally."

"Till the cost of green hydrogen comes down, RIL can be the first mover to establish a hydrogen ecosystem, with minimal incremental investment, in India," the presentation says. 

                                                     RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani

It says that its gasification plant was set up to produce syngas for energy needs of the complex, and provide a platform for future growth in high value chemicals. But now, the syn gas would be used to produce hydrogen. 

Once Reliance moves to green hydrogen--it says it explore both electrolysis and biomass-fed gasification for that purpose--the syn gas could once again be made use of to produce an assortment of chemicals.

But till green hydrogen comes, Reliance will be producing blue hydrogen, capturing the carbon dioxide coming out of the hydrogen production unit and making use of it. "Hydrogen production from gasification provides highly concentrated CO2 stream which provides unique opportunity to capture ~15 MMTPA of CO2 at 30% of typical cost of carbon capture," the presentation says. 

Government warm to the idea of co-electrolysis in sugar plants to produce sustainable aviation fuel

The government of India has accepted a proposal by H2e Power System, a Pune-based company, and the National Federation of Co-operative Sugar Factories to put up a few pilot plants that can produce sustainable aviation fuel from the bagasse-derived electricity in sugar mills.

If this is taken to fruition, it will create a demand for solid oxide electrolysis cell (SOEC) plants from the Indian sugar industry.

The Business Line newspaper reports that H2e Power's Siddharth Mayur and NFCSF's Managing Director, Prakash Naiknavare met the union power minister R K Singh recently and pitched the idea to him--and received encouraging response.

                                           Pugalur sugar plant of EID Parry Ltd; Image Courtesy: EID Parry

The report says that there are about 550 operational sugar plants in the country, most of which burn their bagasse in co-gen plants that produce electricity; the power is sold to utilities under power purchase agreements. The existing tariffs are around Rs 6 - 7 a kWhr, but most of these PPAs are nearing their terms and going foward, the tariffs will nosedive. 

Against this backdrop, the pitch is that the electricity and the carbon dioxide from the co-gen plants could be used in SOEC devices to produce hydrogen and syn gas; the syn gas can be converted into aviation fuel using the Fisher-Tropsch process.

Naiknavare has told Business Line that unless this is done, sugar plants might need to close down the co-gen units. 

The idea that has germinated is to get up 4-5 pilot plants in the state of Maharashtra. If they are successful, as they are expected to be, then "sky is the limit", according to Naiknavare.

ARCI scientist claims discovery of new method to produce hydrogen two-thirds less energy

Scientists at the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy & New Materials (ARCI), an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of India, have developed a method which combines both the processes of electrolysis and reformation to produce hydrogen from methanol-water mixture by electrochemical methanol reformation (ECMR) at ambient pressure and temperature. The main advantage of this process is that the electrical energy needed to produce hydrogen is 1/3^rd of water electrolysis (Practical water electrolysis requires 55-65 kWh/kg of hydrogen). 

In the ECMR process, which uses polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM), hydrogen can be produced at a lower temperature (25-60^oC) and pressure, unlike chemical reformation. Hydrogen separation or purification steps are not required since it is being well separated from CO₂ by polymer membrane used in the system. ARCI team is working on this technology and have developed an electrolysis unit of upto 5.0 kg/day capacity to produce hydrogen. The corresponding energy requirement for the electrolyser stack is around 17 kWhr/kg. The hydrogen thus produced by ARCI is highly pure (99.99%) and can be directly used in PEM fuel cells to generate power of about 11-13 kW.

The core components of the PEM-based ECMR electrolyser stack were fabricated indigenously and integrated with other components in the system. The electrolyser stack was fabricated using exfoliated graphite material as reactant flow field plate. Use of carbon materials as bipolar plates has been one of the significant achievements in replacing the titanium plates, which is otherwise normally used in electrolyser unit assembly, offering a conservative cost-benefit.

ARCI team has developed the indigenous process for fabricating the core components like Membrane Electrode Assembly (MEA), bipolar plates, and several process equipment. This method will significantly reduce the hydrogen cost compared to the water electrolysis method and can be easily integrated with renewable energy sources. ARCI is working with industry partners for integration with renewable energy sources like PV.

Comment

It is not clear as to whether it is the presence of methanol that helps produce hydrogen at a third of the energy taken by the more conventional electrolysis methods.  Anyways, since methanol itself contain hydrogen, it looks like hydrogen-in, hydrogen-out, which would not take much energy. When more clarity emerges on this, this blog will be duly updated.

Biezel Green-Watomo Energies JV to put up India's first biomass-based hydrogen plant in Madhya Pradesh

The country's first commercial-scale biomass-based hydrogen plant is coming up in the Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh, reports Business Line newspaper. The plant will produce a ton of hydrogen a day, from a feedstock of 30 tons of biomass. It will also produce biochar and methane.

The plant is being put up by a joint venture of Watomo Energies Ltd and Biezel Green Energy with an investment of Rs 24 crore. Watomo Energies, headquartered in Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh; Biezel Green is a company promoted by Prof Preetam Singh, who teaches at the IIT BHU. 

Biezel Green is the technology partner. The company owns the technology for a 'thermally accelerated anerobic digestion (TAD) reactor' that can produce hydrogen, methane and biochar from biomass. An earlier post in this blog has a detailed description of this technology. 

Watomo Energies describes itself as a "consulting, marketing, implementation and project management company', and is more like a farmer-producer organization.

Biezel Green will own 50 per cent in the yet-to-be named joint venture; the other 50 per cent will come actually come from interested farmers.

Prof Singh, who was a student of Prof John Goodenough, who won the Nobel Prize in 1999 for his discovery of the Lithium-ion chemistry for batteries. Prof Singh told Business Line today that the joint venture intends to get the Khandwa plant on-stream in July this year, coinciding with Prof Goodenough's 100th birth month.

NTPC speaks of its plans for hydrogen at Simhadri site

Diwakar Kaushik, Chief General Manager at NTPC Simhadri, Andhra Pradesh, has spoken about the company's plans around the green hydrogen production that would happen at his site. 

“During the day, the power generated by the floating solar panels electrolyse water to produce hydrogen. The green hydrogen thus produced is stored and later utilised for power generation during the night,” the Business Line newspaper quotes him as saying. 

NTPC Limited is setting up one such floating solar, renewable energy-powered, fuel cell-based 50 kW microgrid as a pilot at its 2,000 MW Simhadri thermal power plant near Visakhapatnam. 

At Simhadri, NTPC has already set up a 25 MW floating solar project, and, with the expertise of Bloom Energy, it is now developing a standalone fuel cell-based microgrid with hydrogen production. 

The Business Line report notes that Kaushik, who laid the foundation for “the world’s largest green hydrogen microgrid project” in December 2021, expects it to serve as a ‘proof of concept’ for similar ventures within NTPC and possibly elsewhere in the country.

Hydrogen will be produced by the advanced 240 kW solid oxide electrolyser using the power generated by the floating solar project during the day. The hydrogen is then stored at high pressure for use by a 50kW solid oxide fuel cell.

The system would work in a standalone mode from 5 pm to 7 am. The project’s configuration has been designed in-house. NTPC is the largest thermal power company in India, with an installed capacity of over 67,907.5 MW. 

According to Kaushik, this will be India’s first green hydrogen-based energy storage project and one of the world’s largest. It would be a precursor to large-scale hydrogen energy storage projects, and useful for studying and deploying multiple microgrids in various off-grid and strategic locations of the country.

“This unique project will open doors for decarbonising far-off regions of the country like Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, and other areas where there are no transmission lines and are dependent on diesel generators,” says Kaushik.

GAIL commences blending of hydrogen with natural gas

The government owned gas company, Gas Authority of India Ltd (GAIL), has said that it has begun blending hydrogen with its natural gas at Indore, Madhya Pradesh. The hydrogen blended natural ga will be supplied to Avantika Gas, a joint venture of GAIL and Hindustan Petroleum, a government-owned oil refiner. Avantika will retail the blended hydrogen to automobiles and also supply it as cooking gas to households, according to a statement issued by GAIL. 

"In line with the National Hydrogen Mission, GAIL has started hydrogen blending as a pilot project to establish the techno-commercial feasibility of blending hydrogen in City Gas Distribution (CGD) network. This project marks the stepping stone of India's journey towards hydrogen-based and carbon-neutral future," it said.

GAIL started injection of grey hydrogen at the city gate station (CGS), Indore. "This grey hydrogen would subsequently be replaced by green hydrogen," it said. 


Green hydrogen is produced by splitting water by electrolysis with electricity from renewable energy sources. 

GAIL said it has also engaged domain experts to carry out the impact assessment of blending hydrogen in natural gas.

"GAIL has always been committed to the growth of a gas-based economy in India and to India's vision of a greener and cleaner environment. As our country is moving forward with the ambitious goal of achieving a carbon-neutral and self-reliant future, this project is a significant step in that direction," the statement said.

Disappointment as the Budget is silent on hydrogen

The much-anticipated booster shot of incentives from the Indian finance minister, Nirmala Sitaraman, has not happened. Her budget for the year 2022-23 is silent as a tomb on hydrogen.

The industry is bound to be disappointed, because, as outlined in an earlier blogpost in the blog, many analysts had suggested a bouquet of incentives for g-hydrogen--perhaps a 'production-linked incentives' scheme for electrolyzers.

The Business Line newspaper has argued that the budget missed a big opportunity by not giving incentives to electrolyzer manufacturing, where India is not behind other countries, and instead raising incentives to solar manufacture, where it is impossible for Indian manufacturers to compete against the Chinese. 

Solar manufacture is a bus that India has already missed, there is no point in running after it, that too on crutches. Instead, the money could have gainfully been allocated to electrolyzer manufacture.

Clearly, the government has not thought this through and has given in to the solar lobby.