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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Royal Dutch Shell in
Germany aims to produce aviation fuel and naphtha made from crops and renewable
power and to increase to commercial scale an electrolysis plant that makes
fossil-free hydrogen, as it seeks to move away from crude oil, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The
energy major told an online conference it had applied for subsidies to carry out
the work from the European Union and from German funds earmarked for
decarbonisation. Fabian Ziegler, head of Shell Deutschland, said several hundred
million euros should be spent per year, but he did not give a desired ratio
between company and public funding.
The global Shell group has set itself
a goal of net zero emissions by 2050. At Wesseling, part of the Rheinland
refinery, Shell plans to use green electricity and biomass to produce synthetic
power-to-liquids (ptl) in a carbon-free way to replace, over the long term,
conventional jet fuel and naphtha. The 100,000 tonnes/p.a. ptl plant could be
built from 2023 and start producing in 2025.
Shell also gave a timeline
for building a 100 megawatt (MW) electrolysis plant, to be called Refhyne II,
scaling up from an existing 10 MW plant. Hydrogen is considered a green fuel
when electricity from renewable energy sources is used in its production. Shell
has begun securing offshore wind power assets whose electricity it could use as
feedstock for electrolysis.
Through its latest purchase of Next
Kraftwerke, a virtual power plant (VPP) operator, it gets access to aggregated
biomass-to-power and solar plants. A final investment decision for Refhyne II is
due this year and production could start by the end of 2025, Ziegler
said.
The Berlin government last summer earmarked 7 billion euros for the
build-up of green hydrogen in Germany, plus a further 2 billion euros to set up
partnerships with other countries, to introduce the alternative fuel across
industries and energy. The market's build-up will take many years but there are
clear targets in place for 2030, accompanied by plans to repurpose existing gas
and oil transport infrastructure for example around existing refinery
clusters.
Hydrogen has a high energy content by mass, but conversion
losses from electrolysis and high costs involved in readying it for delivery
pose challenges. Costs of producing green hydrogen of 5-6 euros per kg must come
down, given that fossil fuels-based hydrogen costs 1.50 euros/kg, he said. The
plans for Wesseling tie in with other European Shell initiatives, with partners,
to build electrolysis production in Hamburg and in the Netherlands. Shell wants
to build up transport sector delivery chains for hydrogen and provide electric
charging.
We remind that Royal
Dutch Shell has reported an outage at its olefins plant in Deer Park, Texas,
USA, on 5 January, 2021. The plant flared for 16 hours following unspecified
process upset. Maximum steam cracker operating rate in Texas falls to
89%.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene
(PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report,
Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,220,640 tonnes in 2020, up by 2%
year on year. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density
polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, polypropylene (PP) shipments to
the Russian market reached 1 240,000 tonnes in 2020 (calculated using the
formula: production, minus exports, plus imports, excluding producers'
inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply of exclusively PP random copolymer
increased.
Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and
gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered
office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in
terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is
vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry,
including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing,
petrochemicals, power generation and trading. |
