From cornflakes to ceramics: UK energy-switching grants demonstrate hydrogen’s versatility
While hydrogen’s value as a transport fuel tends to attract much of the media’s attention, it is also helping a wide array of industries, making everything from breakfast cereals to teacups and glassware, to decarbonise.
The UK government last week unveiled the 13 projects to receive more than £50 million of grants to switch from hydrocarbons to cleaner fuels to power their industrial processes. Seven of the winners have been awarded almost £20 million to replace natural gas and other carbon dioxide emitting fuels with clean-burning hydrogen.
The biggest grant of almost £6 million was awarded to the British Ceramic Confederation, which intend to deliver the first-ever demonstrations of 100% hydrogen firing technologies for the two main types of kiln (batch and continuous / tunnel) that are used prominently across the more than 150 manufacturing sites of the British Ceramic Confederation’s 90 member companies.
A bespoke hydrogen pilot kiln will be hosted at Glass Futures, an industry not for profit R&D organisation, and hydrogen trials will also be carried out on commercial industrial kilns at three British Ceramic Confederation member sites.
The project aims to provide an important route to help decarbonise the UK ceramic sector by 2040. The hydrogen being used at Glass Futures’ site will be supplied by Ryze Hydrogen.
A grant of almost £6 million has been awarded to the British Ceramic Confederation, which intend to deliver the first-ever demonstrations of 100% hydrogen firing technologies for the two main types of kiln (batch and continuous / tunnel) that are used prominently across the more than 150 manufacturing sites of the British Ceramic Confederation’s 90 member companies.
Another important British industry looking to hydrogen to help it decarbonise is paper manufacturing. Essity will receive a £2.2 million grant to replace natural gas with clean hydrogen in the drying phase of paper production.
Because hydrogen can deliver large quantities of high-grade heat in a similar manner to natural gas, it offers the potential to replace its hydrocarbon cousin without fundamental process changes, while dramatically reducing the emissions associated with Essity’s operations.
Essity is working with Progressive Energy on the project at Essity Tawd in Skelmersdale using live manufacturing equipment.
While it is the activities of humans while alive that create the majority of man-made carbon in the atmosphere, we are even responsible for the creation of planet-warming emissions following our deaths.
In the UK, 79% of people are cremated and 99% of the nation’s 300 crematoria use natural gas. The cremation of roughly 470,000 people each year produces nearly 70,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.
HyCrem has been awarded £1.2 million to change that by switching a working crematorium entirely to hydrogen. Worthing Crematorium in West Sussex is the UK’s third busiest crematorium and last year burned 2.3GWh of natural gas, creating 425 tonnes of CO2 in the process.
A bespoke hydrogen pilot kiln will be hosted at Glass Futures, an industry not for profit R&D organisation. This project aims to provide an important route to help decarbonise the UK ceramic sector by 2040. The hydrogen being used at Glass Futures’ site will be supplied by Ryze Hydrogen.
Together FT Pipeline Systems, Worthing Borough Council, DFW Europe, the University of Brighton, Ricardo AEA and Net Zero Associates aim to demonstrate at scale that natural gas can be replaced by hydrogen in a working crematorium and still maintain the same level of service.
When we are pushing spoonfuls of cereal into our mouths first thing in the morning, most of us are unaware of that natural gas was used in its manufacture. In Phase 1 of the Industrial Fuel Switching Competition, Kellogg’s worked with Progressive Energy to assess the feasibility of replacing natural gas with hydrogen in cereal ovens and boilers at its Trafford Park and Wrexham sites and identified the evidence gaps to be addressed before hydrogen can be deployed.
In this Phase 2 project, Kellogg’s has been given £3.3 million to demonstrate the use of hydrogen in cereal manufacture at Trafford Park, first at pilot scale and then on live manufacturing equipment.
Another sizeable grant, of £4.6 million, was awarded to one of Europe’s largest Used Beverage Can recycling plants, Novelis Latchford Locks Works, which has a recycling capacity of up to 195,000 tonnes.
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Ryze Hydrogen partners with Glass Futures to help decarbonise glass industry
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The company currently uses natural gas burners in its furnaces to remelt scrap aluminium for casting into ingots for use in manufacturing a range of products, including beverage cans and cars. Switching to hydrogen fuel would reduce site emissions by approximately 45,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum, something Novelis will be able to do following a successful Phase 2 project.
The final project awarded funds in this tranche is more of an enabling technology for the use of hydrogen than a hydrogen project itself. Hive Composites was given £2.4 million to demonstrate a novel manufacturing technique for thermoplastic composite pipes that are capable of carrying hydrogen without the embrittlement that steel pipes suffer from when hydrogen molecules pass through it.
A sizeable grant of £4.6 million, has been awarded to one of Europe’s largest Used Beverage Can recycling plants, Novelis Latchford Locks Works, which has a recycling capacity of up to 195,000 tonnes. Switching to hydrogen fuel would reduce site emissions by approximately 45,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum, something Novelis will be able to do following a successful Phase 2 project.
Hive aims to demonstrate that its TCPs can be manufactured five times faster than traditional thermally fused TCP, do not require reprocessing, and reduce the energy to manufacture the pipeline by more than 80%, whilst achieving the required pressure ratings and minimising hydrogen permeation.
Between them, these projects show not only the versatility of hydrogen but the wealth of innovation in the UK’s hydrogen sector. We are confident that government support for such early-stage technologies will spur further investment in the hydrogen sector across the UK.
To learn more about HYCAP, click here.