Q: Please could you briefly explain your role, involvement, and experience with regards to the hydrogen economy and this conference?
Aisling Brazel, RES (AB): I am a Senior Process Engineer, working for Renewable Energy Systems (RES) as part of our joint venture with Octopus Energy Generation - HYRO. My role is to support the development of HYROs Green Hydrogen projects in the UK, ensuring that the world of renewable electricity and process engineering are integrated seamlessly. Day to day, I provide technical guidance in the areas of electrolysis technology, process plant design, process safety and integration with hydrogen offtakers. With HYRO, we have had three projects successfully shortlisted in DESNZs Hydrogen Allocation Round 1, and big ambitions for more in the future!
Marcus Walls-Bruck, National Composites Centre (MWB): My role as head of hydrogen technologies is to ensure we are developing the correct knowledge to support current and future supply chain opportunities in this nascent market. The focus of our hydrogen activities at NCC have been on different storage methods. Hydrogen storage is a significant challenge, either requiring high pressures or cryogenic temperatures. I will be talking about our experience in cryogenic storage, where we have been developing and testing solutions.
Gareth Richardson, AtkinsRéalis (GR): I am the low carbon technology lead for AtkinsRéalis which basically means, I am given the space to look at new technologies that can support our clients in their journey to a net-zero world. A few years ago, as a company we started getting a lot of requests for clean hydrogen production studies. In response to this I spent a lot of time looking at all the different method of producing hydrogen from the current baseline of steam methane reforming to the new and latest electrolysis technologies. Using this knowledge AtkinsRéalis has supported numerous studies across the globe in the production of hydrogen for Green Steel and Ammonia all the way through to what the future of Airports infrastructure might be if Hydrogen Aviation takes off.
In this conference I want to bring some of the learnings from these projects and make the case for Solid-Oxide Electrolysers.
Francesco Fanicchia, Cranfield University (FF): Development of components for the hydrogen economy brings significant material challenges, from embrittlement due to the direct interaction of hydrogen with materials to issues with end use, such as water vapour enhanced oxidation of materials in hydrogen-fuelled engines. I my previous role in industry and my current role as a university senior lecturer, I devise, and coordinate projects related to hydrogen- and water-vapour material interaction challenges with focus on aerospace applications.
Q: What, in your experience, has been the biggest roadblock for utilising hydrogen in your sector?
AB: Although electrolysis for the production of hydrogen has been around for decades, demand for green hydrogen is skyrocketing and production at this scale is relatively new. Technology readiness on both the production and utilisation side is a bit of a challenge in these early days, and I’m spending a lot of my time understanding and trying to mitigate the risks this can introduce.
Education plays a really important role here, ensuring that producers and offtakers alike understand where this important molecule can make the biggest difference – sometimes hydrogen is not the answer!
MWB: For cryogenic storage, the largest barrier has been practical experience in design and test, both at a material and product level. Our work has focused on developing the technology required, but also upskilling our team and supply chain. This knowledge can be used by wider UK supply chain for numerous products and applications beyond storage.
GR: Thermodynamics is not the friend of hydrogen it takes a lot of energy to produce truly clean hydrogen in the form of natural gas or electricity. If we take electricity the lowest amount of energy needed is 39.39 kWh/kg or roughly 20 kettles boiling for an hour will consume the same energy as required to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
As such you either need some where to store lots of CO2 if you want to break methane apart or need an awful lot of clean electricity to break water apart. This typically makes clean hydrogen expensive relative to current hydrogen production technologies that can pollute for almost free, at least currently. Ultimately someone has to pay the premium collectively either via subsidies or the end customer, which ultimately is us. At the moment the demand is slow in coming, so anything that can be done to reduce the cost gap through lowering operating and capital costs is critical.
FF: In aerospace, as the viability of combusting hydrogen has been proven, the current big challenge is to select the right materials, able to operate continuously in a hydrogen atmosphere. Material challenges have been identified in hydrogen storage, distribution, and gas turbine components; in this latter case due to oxidation kinetics being modified by the presence of water vapour.
Q: What key topics are you excited to discuss at this year's conference?
AB: Ensuring the green hydrogen we’re planning on producing is truly “green”! HYRO brings together RES’s decades’ long experience in project development, and Octopus Energy Generations expertise in low cost green energy provision – giving us some good insight into how to optimise plant design to provide lower cost, low carbon intensity hydrogen. I’m excited to talk about the challenges posed by the need to provide stable hydrogen supply, whilst dealing with the variable nature of renewable energy generation.
MWB: I will be discussing our work on composite cryogenic storage tanks. This will cover everything from materials to cryogenic tank build and test. Our work has focused on how to learn quickly, developing new and novel test methods to provide faster and lower cost ways of working out where best to focus our efforts, and how its guided our work.
GR: Really excited to discuss some of the challenges of taking an almost clean sheet approach to a new electrolyser system targeting the lowest cost of hydrogen production. What are the requirements, how to design these in how we maximise vertical scaling on so on.
FF: This year I will be discussing the effect of water vapour on oxidation kinetics of Nickel-based superalloys in aerospace gas turbine engines. This is a very hot topic as hydrogen-fuelled gas turbines will lead to approximately 2.6 times more water vapor than conventional kerosene-fuelled turbines. Interestingly, it was identified that water vapour can change the kinetics of oxidation, potentially by change the reactivity of the surface, adding defects in the growing oxide scale, or forming volatile corrosion products.
Q: Regarding the utilisation of hydrogen, what would you say are the technologies or applications to watch for the future?
AB: Until electrification technology catches up, hydrogen will continue to be a lead case in decarbonisation of industrial heat. Heat production from hydrogen combustion at large scale is a proven technology, and it is possible to retrofit new burners into existing facilities – making it an attractive solution for process plant operators.
MWB: Hydrogen will play a significant role in several sectors. Aerospace and the use of cryogenics is a very exciting application. Large scale storage of hydrogen for grid balancing is a key topic that often receives insufficient coverage.
GR: At the moment ~95 million tonnes of hydrogen are produced globally almost all of it used for the refining of crude oil and nitrate fertiliser production. If I get my crystal ball out then I would see refining demand dropping significantly from mid-2030’s, ammonia demand stable or increasing slightly and new demand coming from green steel, methanol and sustainable aviation fuel. My personnel view is we can forget hydrogen cars and I foresee a lot of challenges for hydrogen trucks to make economic sense at least in the UK and Europe, so fundamentally industrial use cases are the focus where hydrogen is a feedstock.
FF: I am very interested in following the development of hydrogen direct combustion to decarbonise difficult sectors such as the aerospace, heavy duty road transport and energy-intensive industries. I believe these will be the major end users of hydrogen in the future.
Q: Who else are you most interested in hearing from on the programme?
AB: I’m very curious about the industrial applications and infrastructure pieces. From an offtakers perspective, the ability to retrofit hydrogen ready equipment in a capital efficient way will be key to unlocking industrial decarbonisation. Security of supply will also be paramount, which will require clever solutions for storage and transportation. I’m hoping to learn a bit more about these aspects for discussions with future offtakers.
MWB: I’m interested in the breadth of presentation to raise awareness of topics outside my normal focus areas.
GR: I am looking forward to hearing more on other people’s perspectives especially to see if someone can make me sway one way or the other on hydrogen trucks! I will be listening to the other talks on Innovations in Electrolyser Technologies and certainly interested in discussions on standards and regulations.
FF: I am very interested in listening to the material challenges that other industries, apart from aerospace, are facing, including in non-metallic material systems such as composites. Testing methods for hydrogen embrittlement, and their relevance to service conditions, is also an area I would like to gauge the status of in this conference.
Q: Why is it important for engineers to join this conference?
AB: Thanks to DESNZ’s Hydrogen Business Model, hydrogen is quickly becoming a lead case solution for decarbonisation. However, it’s use comes with some unique safety, engineering, and commercial challenges. The content of this conference will give any engineer a good basis for what’s to come.
MWB: The scope covered within this conference provides a fantastic steer of not only where the hydrogen economy is today, but where it will most likely be heading. It provides insight from policy to technology developments in one event.
GR: It is important for engineers to use their training to understand the complexities of hydrogen and to engage in all the different viewpoints that will be put forward from speakers and through panel discussion. I always stick to the following; listen to three experts then make your own decision, typically experts will have a different or at least slightly different opinion.
FF: In such a rapidly evolving field, knowledge exchange is fundamental importance to maximise the research output and shorten the time to market for the hydrogen economy. This conference is the perfect chance to exchange ideas and the latest developments in the field.
The Engineering Challenges in the Hydrogen Economy 2024 conference will be taking place on 6-7 March 2024 in London.
Join this conference to:
- Hear case studies from mature projects addressing infrastructure challenges for production, storage and distribution
- Identify bottlenecks and barriers in moving to a hydrogen economy
- Develop your understanding of the utilisation across different engineering sectors including rail, heavy-duty, aerospace, power generation, marine and more
- Hear from leading experts in the field and explore opportunities to collaborate on new projects
- Gain insight into gaps in the market and requirements for new technology
- Take away lessons learned from other innovative companies to ensure optimal development strategies
- Understand how your existing equipment or products can be deployed in the new hydrogen economy
To book your place, please visit the event website.