Advanced BioFuels USA

by Helena Tavares Kennedy (Biofuels Digest) News comes from the Land of the Rising Sun that a first-of-its-kind Tokyo facility will convert sewage sludge into renewable hydrogen fuel is now complete. Ways2H Inc. and its shareholder and technical partner Japan Blue Energy Co. say the waste-to-hydrogen facility will process 1 ton of dried sewage sludge per day, to generate 40 to 50 kilograms of hydrogen per day, enough to fuel 10 passenger vehicles or 25 fuel-cell e-bikes. And in case you didn’t notice, this year’s Olympic torch left Fukushima a little over a week ago fueled with, yep, you guessed it – hydrogen!

In today’s Digest, details on the Tokyo facility, the advanced thermochemical tech behind it all, other hydrogen facilities in the works, and other hydrogen news so far in 2021 that makes hydrogen hotter than ever.

…

In addition to wastewater sludge, plastic, paper, municipal solid waste and other refuse will be processed. The waste is heated to a high temperature and converted into a gas, from which pure hydrogen is extracted. The facility is carbon-neutral and generates its own fuel in a closed-loop process.

…

The hydrogen recovery process does not burn or incinerate any waste. Instead, the system converts the waste into hydrogen, other gases and pure carbon – called char. The char is used as fuel to generate energy and heat, which is dispatched to the waste via heat carriers, in the form of ceramic beads that heat to a high temperature – about 1,000 degrees C – and are released into the waste, which is heated to create syngas, from which hydrogen is then extracted.

…

Hot Year for Hydrogen

We can’t even list all the hydrogen related developments from 2021 so far because there are too many, but here are a few that caught our attention just from this past month:

• Petronor and SENER agree to build first of 34 planned electrolyzers in Basque Hydrogen Corridor – In Spain, Petronor and SENER agreed the development of an electrolyzer plant that will be located in Bizkaia. Construction of the plant will begin in 2021 and it is expected to come into operation in 2022 in its first phase.
• Stena Bulk unveils InfinityMAX concept vessel design, to use hydrogen as marine fuel – In Sweden, tanker shipping company Stena Bulk unveiled its concept InfinityMAX hybrid bulk carrier design, pushing the boundaries for zero carbon, multi-modal vessel design in shipping. The InfinityMAX concept will use hydrogen as a marine fuel and wind turbines to generate further energy.
• Tidewater developing renewable diesel and hydrogen complex at Prince George refinery – In Canada, Tidewater Midstream and Infrastructure is developing a 3,000 barrels per day renewable diesel and renewable hydrogen complex located on the site of Tidewater’s existing Prince George Refinery in British Columbia, for an estimated total project cost of C$215 to C$235 million.
• Haldor Topsoe to build large-scale facility for green hydrogen production – In Denmark, Haldor Topsoe will invest in a manufacturing facility producing highly efficient solid oxide electrolyzers with a total capacity of 500 megawatt per year with the option to expand to 5 gigawatt per year to accommodate the rapidly increasing demand for competitive electrolysis technology, predominantly for green hydrogen plants based on renewable electricity.
• LCRI Looks at Hydrogen, Biofuels, Synthetic Fuels: The Digest’s 2020 Multi-Slide Guide to Low-Carbon Fuels – Hydrogen, ammonia, synthetic hydrocarbon fuels, and biofuels can provide GHG emissions reduction for difficult-to-decarbonize sectors when produced via low-carbon means, says this Low-Carbon Resources Initiative white paper that looks at production, transport, storage, and use of these low-carbon fuels.
• Enegix Energy to invest $5.4B in green hydrogen project in Brazil – In Brazil, Enegix Energy Pte Ltd unveiled the Base One green hydrogen project in cooperation with the State Government of Ceará, an investment of $5.4 billion. Under the MoU, Enegix will set up the world’s largest green hydrogen plant that will produce over 600 million kg of green hydrogen per year from already contracted 3.4GW of combined baseload wind and solar power through a partnership with Enerwind.    READ MORE