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Heide oil refinery in northwest Germany, which will host the offshore wind-to-hydrogen Westküste 100 project Photo: Raffinerie Heide
Offshore wind to power giant green-hydrogen carbon-neutral aviation-fuel plant
Groundbreaking 700MW Westküste 100 project in Germany could solve problem of curtailed wind production, writes Leigh Collins
by Leigh Collins
30 October 2019Updated 31 October 2019
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A 700MW green hydrogen plant powered by a dedicated Orsted offshore wind farm and producing carbon-neutral aviation fuel could be up and running in Europe by 2030 if an ambitious project backed by the German government goes according to plan.
The Westküste 100 project — which has nine project partners, including developers EDF Energy, Orsted and industrial giant Thyssenkrupp — has been named by federal energy and economy minister Peter Altmaier as one of Germany’s “real-world laboratories of the energy transition” and is set to receive “close to €100m” of government funding.
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The project in northwest Germany, at the site of the Heide oil refinery, will be a unique example of cross-sector co-operation and technology, and show how local wind farms how they can use their excess energy — about 40% of which was wasted last year due to grid constraints.
For the pilot project, surplus wind energy that would otherwise be curtailed will power 30MW of alkaline electrolysers that will split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen will be sold to a nearby cement plant for use as “oxyfuel”, with the waste heat from the electrolysis process sold to a nearby district heating system, thus creating additional revenue streams. Most electrolysis projects simply release the heat and oxygen into the air.
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The green hydrogen will be combined with carbon dioxide captured from the cement plant to produce synthetic methanol, which would then be refined into carbon-neutral synthetic kerosene (ie, aviation fuel), for use at the nearby Hamburg airport. The airport is hoping that 5% of all fuel used there will be carbon-neutral by 2025.
The Heide refinery happens to have huge salt caverns on its land where up to ten millions tonnes of hydrogen can be stored, as well as a dedicated bidirectional hydrogen pipeline to a Linde grey-hydrogen facility 30km away — so large amounts of green hydrogen could eventually be stored and transported via pipeline for use elsewhere, including injection into the natural-gas grid.
The ins and outs of the Westküste 'real-world laboratory'. Photo: Raffinerie Heide
Decarbonising an oil refinery
The Westküste 100 project, named after the “west coast” of Schleswig-Holstein state where it is located, is the brainchild of Raffinerie Heide