France – The Hyflexpower partnership, comprised of ENGIE Solutions, Siemens Energy, Centrax, Arttic, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and four European institutions, has completed the first stage of an innovative renewable energy research project.
This program, located at the Smurfit Kappa Saillat Paper Mill in Saillat-sur-Vienne (France), is the world’s first industrial site to introduce an integrated hydrogen demonstrator.
The goal of the HYFLEXPOWER project is to show that green hydrogen can be utilized to store energy that can subsequently be used to power an industrial turbine. The hydrogen is created on-site using an electrolyzer and used to generate power in a gas turbine using a mix of 30% hydrogen and 70% natural gas.
World’s first
The project is the world’s first industrial-scale power-to-X-to-power demonstration using an improved turbine and fuel with a high hydrogen percentage. Trials will continue in 2023 to raise the hydrogen ratio up to 100%.
While large-scale availability of green hydrogen is still some time away, the consortium’s members are looking beyond 2030 and testing new technology, such as hydrogen, today. The partners will be able to comprehend the technical viability of using hydrogen while preserving much of the existing energy infrastructure through this initiative. This demonstrator would provide tremendous opportunities for industry.
Collaboration
This highly innovative project necessitates extensive collaboration among various industries, academic institutions, and research institutes. The project was motivated by the European Commission’s (EC) study titled “Hydrogen Strategy for a Climate-Neutral Europe,” which describes the critical role that hydrogen would play in the European Green Deal carbon neutrality and energy transformation plan.
The project’s stakeholders include ENGIE Solutions, Siemens Energy, Centrax, ARTTIC, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and the Universities of NTUA Athens (Greece), Lund (Sweden), Duisburg-Essen (Germany), and UCL (UK).
The European Commission is contributing significantly to the initiative, which was first announced in 2020, with two-thirds of the €15.2 million investment coming from the EU’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. The HYFLEXPOWER project’s next testing are slated for Summer 2023.
