MOSCOW (MRC) -- Royal Dutch Shell launched Europe's biggest hydrogen electrolysis plant of 10 megawatts (MW) called Refhyne at the Wesseling site of its Rheinland refinery after two years of construction, expanding further into alternative energies, reported Reuters.
The plant will produce green fuels within a European Union-funded consortium which is already setting sights on a facility of 100 MW at the site near Cologne to scale up its commercial operations.
Hydrogen is considered "green" when it is produced from renewable power from wind or solar through electrolysis whereas "grey" hydrogen from fossil fuels is a feedstock in many standard industry processes today. Hydrogen has a high energy content by mass, but conversion losses from electrolysis and high costs involved in readying it for delivery pose challenges.
Under the EU Green Deal's climate targets, green quality hydrogen is expected to play a role in energy, but also in mobility, heat provision, and hard-to-decarbonise industries such as steel or cement.
Shell also aims to produce sustainable aviation fuel from renewable electricity and biomass at Wesseling as well as developing a plant for liquefied renewable natural gas (bio-LNG).
The polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyser will use renewable power to produce up to 1,300 tonnes a year of green hydrogen, initially to be used to produce fuels with lower carbon intensity and later to decarbonise other industries.
The plant has cost around EUR20 million (USD23.72 million) of which half came from EU funds.
As MRC informed earlier, following the announcement of a joint development agreement in June 2020, Dow and Shell have recently reported progress on their technology programme to electrically heat steam cracker furnaces. This new route has the potential to significantly reduce CO2 emissions from one of the central processes of the chemical industry.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 744,130 tonnes in the first four month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, PP deliveries to the Russian market were 523,900 tonnes in January-April 2021, up by 55% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas shipments of PP random copolymers decreased.
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.
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