Using LOHC for a sustainable energy supply

Learn the cost and availability advantages of using liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHCs), like the one from Hydrogenious, for hydrogen transport

DUE TO accelerating climate change and the Russian war in Ukraine, the flexibility and independence of energy sources has become an even greater focus of public attention. Industrial progress has always been closely linked to the availability of affordable energy. Therefore, the immediate substitution of Russian fossil fuels and the longerterm transition from fossil to renewable energies presents the economy with completely new challenges in terms of security, availability and costs of the energy needed. How can this transition succeed as quickly as possible in times of political uncertainty? And how can it be implemented with high security and low cost to increase social acceptance? Green hydrogen, which is produced from water by means of electrolysis and using renewable electricity, allows a CO2-free, sustainable energy cycle. It can be produced on a large scale in regions such as southern Europe, Africa, Australia or the Middle East by solar and wind power, and offers great potential in terms of decarbonisation of industry, transport and the heating sector – provided that the hydrogen can be transported and traded globally. In the context of the war in Ukraine, the EU adjusted targets for the import of green hydrogen to ten megatonnes per year, doubling the original target of its programme ‘Fit for 55’. At the same time, targets for production within the EU have also been doubled to ten megatonnes per year. This means effectively that half the required hydrogen needs to be imported. For Germany and its highly developed economy, the topic of hydrogen logistics is particularly relevant as the local availability of solar and wind energy do not meet the demand, and regions with higher generation capacities produce energy at a significantly lower cost. Therefore, the German government also stated in its national hydrogen strategy: ‘To meet future demand, the majority of hydrogen will have to be imported and cannot be supplied by local production of green hydrogen alone.’ That is why reliable means of transportation are crucial.

LEVERAGING EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE – WITH LOHC

For efficient and cost-effective storage, transport, and distribution of green hydrogen on a global scale, not many technologies meet the demands of the industry – what is needed is a safe and efficient supply of decarbonised hydrogen of high quality, ideally in existing infrastructures. In order to store and transport the volatile hydrogen in gaseous or liquid form, considerable effort is involved, as high pressure or extremely low temperatures have to be maintained. The liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC) technology from German company Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies in Erlangen, offers a promising approach to solving this problem. In the LOHC process, hydrogen molecules are chemically bonded to a liquid, oil-like, carrier material at the point of generation in a so-called hydrogenation plant. Hydrogenious uses the thermal oil benzyltoluene for this purpose, which has been identified to be the ideal medium for large-scale industrial use. The loaded LOHC can be easily transported at ambient conditions, leveraging existing fossil fuel infrastructure and solutions for storage, transport, and infrastructure (e.g. at ports), to its destination at the offtakers. Here, a dehydrogenation unit releases the hydrogen from the carrier material. The dehydrogenated LOHC is then transported back like a deposit bottle and can be reloaded with hydrogen hundreds of times. The advantage of benzyltoluene is its ease of handling. The mineral oil is widely used in industry and commercially available in large quantities. It also has a low hazard potential because it is flame retardant and non-explosive. It has a high volumetric energy density and can be handled like a fossil liquid fuel in existing infrastructure at ambient pressure and temperature. Thus, existing fossil fuel infrastructure can be used to transport the LOHC, allowing rapid implementation of hydrogen supply chains.

FLEXIBLE, FAST AND SCALABLE

What makes Hydrogenious’ LOHC technology so special is its impressive scalability. From regional distribution to global supply chains, from hydrogen refuelling stations to large, industrial customers such as the steel or chemical industries; LOHC enables a wide range of hydrogen projects to be implemented flexibly, quickly and safely.

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At the beginning of July 2022, the operator H2 Mobility opened a hydrogen filling station for cars, commercial vehicles and buses in Erlangen, Germany, which for the first time is also supplied with green hydrogen in the form of LOHC. Several advantages of Hydrogenious’ technology came to bear in this pilot project. Previously prevailing hydrogen filling stations supplied exclusively with compressed hydrogen have limited storage capacities and a high space requirement. LOHC offers great advantages here, especially in urban areas, in terms of safety, space requirements and flexibility, since the material can be stored in conventional diesel tanks at normal pressure and ambient temperature, so no loss of hydrogen occurs. The hydrogen for the filling station is produced with solar power from a photovoltaic system via a PEM electrolyser at Hydrogenious’ headquarters in Erlangen and stored in a LOHC. The LOHC is transported to the hydrogen filling station by tanker truck and stored in underground tanks (30 m³ each), allowing the filling station to stock 1,500 kg of hydrogen safely and without upkeep or boil-off losses. Such large hydrogen volumes in storage are not yet common at pressurised hydrogen filling stations. Hydrogenious provides green hydrogen with the highest degree of purity (according to the DIN EN 17124 or ISO 14687 standard) as vehicle fuel via its ReleaseBox release system, which is connected to the underground tanks. The tank truck for LOHC transport has five tank chambers with a total gross capacity of 45,000 L and allows simultaneous filling and emptying of the LOHC loaded with hydrogen and the LOHC unloaded. Two pump-metering systems with mass counters allow simultaneous receiving and discharging of the liquid. Hydrogenious’ dehydration/release facility is housed in a 30’ (9.14 m) container adjacent to the fuelling station. Here, the hydrogen is released with a compression of 45 bar and then brought to the 350 bar (bus, truck) or 700 bar (car, light commercial vehicle) required during refuelling in an intermediate storage tank. Such a dehydrogenation system from Hydrogenious LOHC has already been successfully tested in 2021 in Woikoski, Finland together with a hydrogenation system as part of the project Hydrogen Supply and Transportation using Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (HySTOC). Here, the systems proved their reliability under the harshest environmental conditions and low temperatures.

IMPLEMENTING EUROPE-WIDE AND GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS

In addition to these pilot projects, there are also large-scale industrial lighthouse ventures that are being implemented with Hydrogenious’ LOHC technology, as LOHC can show its strengths particularly in high-volume-large-distance transport chains. Where no pipelines for hydrogen are currently possible, LOHC technology bridges gaps in the transport chain quickly and efficiently. With annual production volumes of 10,000 tonnes of green hydrogen, the Green Crane project is an example of such large-volume hydrogen import projects. Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies and its partners aim to connect green hydrogen sources to customers in central and northern Europe via the high seas within five years. Hydrogenious subsidiary LOHC Industrial Solutions NRW is also building what is currently the largest LOHC storage plant at Chempark Dormagen, North RhineWestphalia, Germany, with a capacity of approximately 1,800 tpa of hydrogen. Several destinations of the LOHC-filled tanker trucks, supplying industrial and mobility offtakers in Germany as well as in the Rotterdam port area, are currently being discussed. Another planned large-scale project is Blue Danube, a pan-European supply chain for green hydrogen in the Danube region, coordinated by Verbund. Here, electrolysers in Germany, Austria and Romania are to produce more than 30,000 tpa of green hydrogen by 2026, which will then cover the entire Danube region in a trans-European supply chain, including the use of LOHC for the shipping of hydrogen on the river Danube in an industrial scale. In March 2022, ADNOC, Uniper, JERA Americas and Hydrogenious LOHC announced a partnership to jointly explore the possibility of hydrogen transport between the UAE and Germany using LOHC technology. This cooperation was announced during the visit of Robert Habeck, Germany’s federal minister for economic affairs and climate protection, to the UAE. Work on the study is currently in full swing and is to be completed by the end of the year. The goal is the implementation of a supply chain from the Emirates to Europe. These and other projects are important milestones on the way to making renewable energies globally tradable and transportable with the help of green hydrogen and to supply industry with affordable energy. LOHC technology makes an important contribution to this by harnessing existing infrastructure – which means a significant cost and availability advantage compared to building completely new transport chains.

For more information: www.hydrogenious.net

01 The small dehydrogenation or release facility (ReleaseBox 10) operating in the H2Sektor demonstration project at the Erlangen hydrogen filling station releases around one kilogram of hydrogen per hour from around 20 L of LOHC material. Since 2022, Hydrogenious has been pursuing the development of significantly larger release facilities in a capacity range of at least 1.5 tonnes of hydrogen/day. ©Hydrogenious

LOHC Technologies 02 The new LOHC tanker from tanker manufacturer Kurt Willig provides the LOHC logistics part and transports both the hydrogenloaded LOHC and the unloaded material at the same time, thanks to its multi-tank chamber system. ©David Häuser