A factory located in southern Spain in a town called Puertollano is almost to hit the world record. This is because it is using green hydrogen for manufacturing fertilizer. It is one of the biggest and promising projects about hydrogen in the entire world. The company is utilizing solar farms to make hydrogen.
The factor’s locality is sunny most of the time, making it suitable for the project to prosper. To date, there is a construction of a solar plant, which is meant to offer more power for hydrogen generation. The hydrogen, in turn, will be used in the manufacturing of ammonia fertilizer.
Scientifically, in case you burn hydrogen, it generates power just as other fuels do. But it differs from other fossils fuels in that hydrogen forms water after combusting with oxygen instead of producing carbon dioxide.
Worldwide, there are more than 70 million tons of hydrogen generated yearly, which is mainly used in fertilizer manufacturing factories and oil refineries companies. However, the “grey hydrogen” produced from coal and natural gas generates more greenhouse gases.
Energy companies have been pressurized to produce power that will not negatively affect the climate. The green hydrogen is one of the promising energy that is likely to help get rid of fossil fuels, especially in the transport industry.
One of the essential reasons that hydrogen is the most preferred in the Fertiberia plant is that apart from being used as a chemical raw material, it is used to store power and as green transportation energy. It also does not produce carbon dioxide when burning.
International Energy Agency says that over 800 million tonnes of CO2 goes into the atmosphere through factories that use grey hydrogen yearly.
Two methods are used to come up with clean hydrogen that does not pollute the climate. The first is the production of green hydrogen from water through the use of energy from recyclable power. The second way is the generation of blue hydrogen, which is derived from natural gases.
The primary concern about the green and blue hydrogen is the cost of production. This is because it is less expensive to produce hydrogen using fossil fuels compared to making clean hydrogen. The cost of producing one kilogram of grey hydrogen is €1.5 while producing a kilogram of green hydrogen is €3.5-€5.
Mr. Delgado said they are trying as much as possible to ensure the cost of producing hydrogen gets down. One of these ways is ensuring that they acquire a source of power that is less costly.
Norwegian Power Company in the United Kingdom is one of the many companies trying to invest in blue hydrogen. The company’s construction is expected to commence in 2023 and be in the generation industry by 2026.
