Spain’s Exolum tests using oil infrastructure for green hydrogen in Britain
MADRID, Nov 13 (Reuters) – Spanish oil storage infrastructure company Exolum has kicked off a pilot project in Britain this week to test using existing oil infrastructure to transport and store green hydrogen on a commercial scale.
The test uses liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHC) – organic compounds that can absorb and release hydrogen through chemical reactions – to transport and store hydrogen in liquid form, the company said on Wednesday, in what it says is a world first.
The aim is to tackle a key issue of the hydrogen economy: how to safely transport it to end users at reasonable cost.
Reusing existing fossil fuel storage and pipelines would help speed up the deployment of green hydrogen, the company said. So-called green hydrogen is produced using renewable energy.
Exolum, partly owned by buyout fund CVC, Australian asset manager Macquarie, Canadian pension fund OMERS, and French bank Credit Agricole (CAGR.PA), will use its infrastructure at the British freight port of Immingham.
Under the project, which the British government supported with 505,000 pounds ($647,000), some 400 cubic metres of LOHC containing 20 metric tons of hydrogen will be transported through a 1.5 kilometre (0.9 mile) pipeline.
Early next year, the company plans to publish a report with potential costs and benefits of the system.
($1 = 0.7804 pounds)
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Spain’s Exolum tests using oil infrastructure for green hydrogen in Britain, source
