In the initial planning phase of the green hydrogen production plant the detail engineering of the critical building blocks was finalised. Detailed layouts, safety and implementation studies were carried out. These studies also served as basis for the permission documentation. The major milestone of successful authorisation for building and operating the electrolyser plant was granted by the end of 2017.
During the reporting period, manufacturing of the PEM modules at the Siemens Erlangen site started. A Silyzer 300 electrolyser prototype which works at atmospheric pressure was shown at the Hannover Trade Fair in Germany in April 2018 for the first time.
The electrolyser building was constructed, the electrical and media supplies and the infrastructure necessary were defined and are currently being implemented. The link of the electrolyser with the power and energy markets and the validation of the monitoring system for calculating the KPIs is currently in progress.
The scale-up and roll-out analysis focused so far on creating an overview of the steel and ammonia industry in the EU28 member states and on analysing the impact on electricity and energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions in case of partial or complete replacement of the conventional fossil based processes to renewable electrolytic hydrogen-based processes. In addition to these techno-economic study activities a first outline of the main regulatory issues and relevant legislation has been drafted as part of the final deliverable on recommendations to regulatory bodies.
In the first reporting period, the H2FUTURE consortium implemented 55 communication activities using different tools such as articles, invited key note lectures, exhibitions, workshops, poster and video presentations and a dedicated project website and was present at expert conferences, workshops, in expert magazine articles, daily print and online media (national and international) and in national broadcasting corporation. These activities were backed up by communication material available for the H2FUTURE consortium partners, comprising of a project website (www.h2future-project.eu) three videos, templates for PPTs, posters, reports and design guidelines based on the communication requirements in the Grant Agreement.
All Deliverables and Milestones of the Action scheduled in the first reporting period from 1st January 2017 to 30th June 2018 have been delivered and met.
The main part of the second reporting period from 1st of July 2018 to 31st of December 2019 was the manufacturing and erection of the electrolyzer plant. Most of the objectives and milestones of the project have been achieved with relatively minor deviations, however the manufacturing of the modules needed longer than expected. On November 11th, 2019 the first cubic meters of hydrogen were produced. The commissioning of the plant was continued. In the first quarter of 2020 the plant will be ready to start the demonstration phase.
