Hydrogen for heat production for hard-to-abate industries (e.g. retrofitted burners, furnaces)

The scope of this topic is to develop and validate an integrated hydrogen burner system within heating furnaces in energy intensive industrial applications by retrofitting existing furnaces so that they are able to run on up to 100% hydrogen;

Proposals should address the following:

• Development of pure hydrogen and hydrogen/standard fuel mixtures burner to be integrated in existing furnaces compliant NO_x emission standards (industrial scales). Research areas should focus on flame monitoring, optimal mixture formation and impact of buoyancy effects, flame stability & flashback and reduction of emissions. The implementation of the development should be executed on a demonstrator in an operational environment ensuring a TRL 7 at project end. The demonstrator should run for a period of at least 6 months, operating for at least 100h at 100% hydrogen. The furnace thermal output should be of at least 1 MW_th.
• Assessment of the impact of the use of hydrogen in its different percentages of substitution for fossil fuels in furnaces and products within different hard to abate application sectors.
• Investigation of the influence of hydrogen and higher gas supply pressures on component tightness.
• Development of concepts for the safe integration of hydrogen in industrial plants in the sectors of application and demonstration of the retrofitting of burners so that they can be operated safely with up to 100% H₂ including odorants, colorants and others as applicable.
• The hydrogen-based burner should demonstrate the potential to achieve an equal or improved heating performance (in terms of energy used to heat certain mass/volume).
• Investigations of potential impacts on process performance, equipment operation and maintenance under the presence of hydrogen combustion products (heat exchangers, flame detection, heat recovery technologies, burner nozzles, etc.).
• Integration of hydrogen production units in industrial environments with high temperature processes (waste gases enthalpy content, requirements in terms of hydrogen supply pressure and purity, etc.).
• Techno-economic analysis to replicate the solution to other industrial sites. Study the impact of the H₂ cost to the final costs of the final product and impact of CO₂ emissions reduction in the final cost of the product (under ETS program).

Applicants should ensure and provide evidence of the availability of hydrogen, as function of the thermal output of the furnace demonstrated.

Proposals are expected to build on previous projects supported by the Clean Hydrogen JUJU. In addition, applicants are encouraged to seek synergies with existing projects of the Horizon Europe Process4Planet and Clean Steel partnerships or future topics. In particular with the view of integrating the developed solution(s) into larger scale, real-life applications. In addition, synergies with hydrogen production topics supported by the JU in the current call (such as HORIZON-JTI-CLEANH2-2023-01-07: ‘Hydrogen use by an industrial cluster via a local pipeline network’) maybe considered for the hydrogen supply during demonstrator tests.

Applicants are encouraged to address sustainability and circularity aspects in the activities proposed.

This topic is expected to contribute to EU competitiveness and industrial leadership by supporting a European value chain for hydrogen and fuel cell systems and components.

Proposals should provide a preliminary draft on ‘hydrogen safety planning and management’ at the project level, which will be further updated during project implementation.

Activities are expected to start at TRL 5 and achieve TRL 7 by the end of the project - see General Annex B.

At least one partner in the consortium must be a member of either Hydrogen Europe or Hydrogen Europe Research.

The maximum Clean Hydrogen JU contribution that may be requested is EUR 6.00 million – proposals requesting Clean Hydrogen JU contributions above this amount will not be evaluated.

Purchases of equipment, infrastructure or other assets used for the action must be declared as depreciation costs. However, for the following equipment, infrastructure or other assets purchased specifically for the action (or developed as part of the action tasks): hydrogen burner and related components needed to integrate it in existing burners/furnaces including hydrogen storage and feed, costs may exceptionally be declared as full capitalised costs.

The conditions related to this topic are provided in the chapter 2.2.3.2 of the Clean Hydrogen JU 2023 Annual Work Plan and in the General Annexes to the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2023–2024 which apply mutatis mutandis.