Spanish firms to build pilot plant for 24/7 green H2 production

Two Spanish companies have secured a EUR 2.66 million (USD 2.90m) in state funding to build a pilot green hydrogen plant in Seville, southern Spain, with a goal to demonstrate round-the-clock hydrogen production using renewable energy and thermal energy storage.

Engineering consultancy RPow and renewable hydrogen solutions provider H2B2 Electrolysis Technologies (H2B2) said their consortium had been selected to receive the grant in the hydrogen value chain programme 4, one of the many incentives schemes launched by the Spanish ministry for the ecological transition over the past two years.

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Their project, called “Design and development of an electricity and steam production system using thermal storage for the generation of green H2 by electrolysis” or H2-24/7, will showcase how thermal energy can enhance the efficiency of the electrolysis process.

The core components of the proposed pilot plant are the 100-kW high-temperature SOEL electrolyser with an electrical efficiency of 39 kWh/kg and a thermal energy storage (TES) system capable of producing electricity and steam at temperatures in the 700-900 degrees Celsius range.

The TES will use molten salts to store heat, which can then be utilised to generate steam to power a turbine, producing electricity. This electricity, along with the stored thermal energy, will be used to operate the electrolyser for more hours per day than what the intermittent renewables would allow. According to RPow CEO Cesar Martin-Montalvo, this is “possible the most innovative feature of the new plant”.

(EUR 1.0 = USD 1.090)