Green hydrogen production to support steel production in Sheffield is being considered after government funding was secured.
E.on, the city’s university and industrial partners are collaborating, with biomass to be explored as a feedstock. A consortium has been formed to assess the feasibility, having successfully tapped into the Department Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and its Net Zero Innovation portfolio.
It will be based at E.on’s Blackburn Meadows Renewable Energy Park, the location of a combined heat and power plant. For the past seven years it has used recycled waste wood sourced from within the UK to generate 30MW of electrical energy and up to 25MW of thermal energy, powering up to 69,000 homes and businesses in South Yorkshire.
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Partners include Forgemasters and Forged Solutions, working alongside Chesterfield Special Cylinders and supported by Glass Futures and the Advances Manufacturing Research Centre element of University of Sheffield.
Michael Lewis, E.ON UK chief executive, said: “Hydrogen will play a significant role in our energy future, mainly powering energy-intensive industries and long-distance transport. It sits alongside the drive for heat pumps meeting domestic heating needs and a greater role for district energy schemes in urban areas.
“Our Blackburn Meadows plant is the perfect example of a range of technologies coming together to provide a solution for an entire city and generating green hydrogen for Sheffield’s world-renowned steelmakers means an economic win for them, greater security of their energy supplies as well as better air quality for the city and accelerating Sheffield’s energy transition to net zero.”
A total of £400,000 has been secured from BEIS. The study will run from September 2022 to February 2023, looking at the requirements to switch from gas, as well as the production and distribution of hydrogen.
Professor Mohamed Pourkashanian, leading on the project for the University of Sheffield, said: “To reach a hydrogen economy there will be many barriers, not least in fully understanding and investigating the technical challenges faced in switching to hydrogen as a fuel, and how it will integrate into our existing infrastructure. This project takes a vital step in making this technology a reality for industrial partners, and its findings will not only support the decarbonisation of the steel industry, but also has potential to bring practical and theoretical knowledge to other foundation industries.”
The wider region is looking to play a major role in the decarbonisation agenda, with the Humber industrial cluster at the forefront. Sheffield’s industrial heritage and wider energy generation has been seen as an extension of what is being worked up.
Ryan Edmonds, director of customer programmes at Sheffield Forgemasters, said: “We are delighted that Sheffield has secured funding for a feasibility study into the production of green hydrogen as a potential source of energy for the steel industry.
“The transition to greener forms of energy is something that we are actively engaged in as we plan for significant site-wide changes, which will deliver new manufacturing technologies including the potential to replace gas with hydrogen for some manufacturing processes, the adoption of solar energy and greater engineering efficiencies.
“A green hydrogen fuel source could help to support our work towards green energy provision and meeting the Government’s net-zero targets, through production for civil nuclear and renewable energy markets.”
If the feasibility project proves the business case, the project could progress to a technical pilot project on the Blackburn Meadows site, with potential for future expansion if the project is taken forward to a full commercial demonstration.
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