Helgoland / Essen / Hamburg / Erlangen / Kassel / Bremen — The future begins now: With up to 12.48 million euros in funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the research and development work in the TransHyDE project Helgoland is entering the active phase.
The common goal of the project partners: the establishment of a hydrogen transport chain from the offshore area near Helgoland via the ports to the hydrogen consumers on the mainland. For this purpose, technologies for the storage and transport of green hydrogen in organic carrier liquids, LOHCs – liquid organic hydrogen carriers, are researched and developed. The project belongs to the hydrogen lead project TransHyDE of the BMBF and is part of the broad-based AquaVentus initiative, in which all hydrogen activities around Helgoland’s southern port are bundled under the name AquaPortus.
Joint path
towards a climate-neutral future “We are pleased about the recognition and the impetus for the start of the hydrogen age with our project partners in the Hamburg and Heligoland ports. AquaPortus is an important building block for our entire AquaVentus family in order to bring green future technologies to market maturity on the way to climate neutrality ”, says Helgoland’s mayor and AquaVentus chairman Jörg Singer.
“We are thrilled to be able to further test all the benefits of our LOHC technology in the TransHyDE project Helgoland. Together with the Helgoland utilities, we also enable the conversion of the island heat supply from heating oil to CO2-neutral LOHC waste heat on and for Helgoland. And by setting up an LOHC release plant in the Port of Hamburg, not only is the flexible, safe, simple and efficient green hydrogen supply in the area possible in a timely manner, but we are already creating the first building block for the large-volume import infrastructure within the meaning of the Federal Government’s National Hydrogen Strategy ”, explains Rafael Schmidt, Head of Business Development at Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies.
The transport of hydrogen via the organic hydrogen carrier LOHC has many advantages for logistics, emphasizes Karin Debacher, TransHyDE project manager at Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA). “With the TransHyDE project Helgoland, HHLA wants to develop the requirements for a sustainable and economical LOHC transport chain. We would also like to gain practical experience with the transport and dehydrogenation of hydrogen using LOHC, ”says Debacher.
On the occasion of the announcement of the funding for the TransHyDE project, E.ON Thomas Birr, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer, pointed out the importance of green hydrogen, especially for medium-sized companies: “E.ON offers the many medium-sized companies in Europe in particular solutions for decarbonising their heat – and refrigeration as well as their production processes. Forward-looking projects based on green hydrogen will play an increasingly important role here in the future. ”
All project partners: including the municipality of Helgoland, the Helgoland GmbH utility company, E.ON, the Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA), Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies, the Tewis Projektmanagement GmbH as well as the GASCADE Gastransport GmbH, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Applied materials research IFAM and the AquaVentus coordination office are now looking forward to their joint work on the innovative project
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Next steps in research and development
TransHyDE Helgoland focuses on the question of how the green hydrogen generated at sea can be stored and transported to consumers on the mainland. “That is why we are jointly developing the basics for the first pilot and isolated solutions for LOHC use, which we then implement on a demonstration scale,” explains project coordinator Christoph Tewis. Various possible uses and scenarios are to be examined, compared and evaluated in the research and development phase. “Our goal is a concrete implementation plan for the large-scale implementation of hydrogen conversion, storage and utilization both on Heligoland and on the mainland as well as the investigation of large-volume, supraregional transport chains based on LOHC”, Tewis continues.
About AquaVentus
The project family around the AquaVentus Initiative comprises numerous sub-projects along the value chain from the production of hydrogen in the North Sea to transport to customers on the mainland. These coordinated consortia synchronize demand and generation and thus enable a rapid market ramp-up. The AquaVentus project family includes, for example: the development of offshore wind turbines with integrated hydrogen generation (AquaPrimus), a large-scale offshore hydrogen park (AquaSector), a central supply pipeline (AquaDuctus), port infrastructures and transport chains (AquaPortus), maritime hydrogen-based applications (AquaNavis ) as well as a research platform (AquaCampus).
About the hydrogen lead projects
The hydrogen lead projects form the largest research initiative of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) on the subject of the energy transition to date. In the industry-led lead projects, business and science jointly develop solutions for the German hydrogen economy: series production of large-scale electrolysers (H2Giga), generation of hydrogen at sea (H2Mare), technologies for the transport of hydrogen (TransHyDE).
The TransHyDE lead project evaluates and tests hydrogen transport solutions. A hydrogen economy cannot function without a suitable transport infrastructure, which is why four transport technologies are to be advanced in demonstration projects: (1) hydrogen transport in high-pressure containers, (2) hydrogen-liquid transport, (3) hydrogen Transport in existing and new gas pipelines as well as (4) the transport of hydrogen bound in ammonia or the carrier medium LOHC.
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