Following successful alpha stage trials in 2022, the HyNTS consortium, including Element 2, has been awarded a further £9.9m from the OFGEM Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) to move into real-world trials of its Deblending for Transport Applications project.
This is one of 10 projects to be delivered in partnership with Innovate UK, aimed at accelerating the transition to more homegrown, decarbonised energy at the lowest cost to consumers.
The Beta stage of the HyNTS Deblending for Transport Applications project will create a fully functioning de-blending and refuelling facility to showcase how grid-extracted hydrogen can be purified, stored and used for heavy transport refuelling.
Transporting gaseous hydrogen via tankers to hydrogen refuelling stations is expensive over longer distances. Pipeline transmission provides an effective, economic and safe alternative, while also keeping road traffic and transport CO2 emissions down. The aim of HyNTS is to prove that this is viable from both a technical and economic perspective, unlocking the potential of nationwide distribution network for hydrogen.
HyNTS Deblending for Transport Applications aims to develop an economically feasible method of adding smaller quantities of hydrogen to the existing gas network and then extract the hydrogen at the point of use. This has the potential to supply Element 2’s refuelling stations directly from the gas grid, eliminating the need for the road transport of hydrogen.
Brendan Bilton, chief technical officer at Element 2 said: “Through our commitment to providing our customers with the greenest hydrogen at the lowest prices we work with a variety of technology developers in what is a rapidly changing landscape. Through our involvement in these exciting projects, Element 2 is in a position to make use of technological advances such as deblending as soon as they are proven feasible.”
Approximately £49.1m is going to projects exploring hydrogen-related technologies. These include £33.3m of funding for National Gas Transmission led work to adapt existing gas compression units for use with hydrogen, to enable it to be fed into networks. A further £9.9m of funding has been allocated to investigate the viability of using hydrogen to fuel heavy duty transportation.
