Chemicals group Ineos has unveiled plans to upgrade operations at its Runcorn complex in northwest England to produce hydrogen of adequate quality to use in transport and power generation from 2023.

The project will costs “tens of millions of pounds” and forms part of the €2bn ($2.33bn) investment in clean hydrogen production at sites across Europe announced by Ineos in mid-October.

The Runcorn site, operated by Ineos subsidiary Inovyn, produces around 7,000t/yr of hydrogen as a byproduct of electrolyser-based production of chloralkali.

The upgrade will see the installation of facilities to purify and compress the hydrogen to a high-enough quality to be used in fuel cells for distribution to fuelling stations across the UK.

“We are committed to supporting hydrogen in the UK, and this is the first step,” Inovyn UK country and operations manager Nigel Bouckley told Hydrogen Economist on the sidelines of an event at the Runcorn site.

Piecing the jigsaw together

Ineos is funding the project itself and is not receiving government support, Bouckley says, urging the UK government to support the roll-out of hydrogen infrastructure.

“We need the government to put in place the middle part of the jigsaw,” he says, noting that Germany has 110 hydrogen filling stations compared with 11 in the UK.

“We are committed to supporting hydrogen in the UK, and this is the first step” Bouckley, Inovyn

Hydrogen production at Runcorn has the potential to provide low-carbon fuel to power over 1,000 buses or 2,000 trucks, according to Ineos.

Inovyn has in place some memorandums of understanding to supply hydrogen to end-users, including a Liverpool bus operator, but has not yet signed official offtake agreements, storage projects manager Richard Stevenson tells Hydrogen Economist.

Inovyn produces clean hydrogen at Runcorn from its chloralkali process using a bipolar electrolyser with a capacity of 185MW.

The electrolyser draws on the national power grid, which has a diverse energy mix and therefore does not qualify as green hydrogen. Inovyn will look at renewable power solutions for Runcorn at a later stage, the company says.

Hydrogen has been produced at the Runcorn site for over a century, and Inovyn is keen to leverage its expertise to enter the emerging hydrogen market.

“Invoyn is in a unique position to reaffirm its expertise in hydrogen production and electrolysis,” says Inovyn CEO Geir Tuft.

Seat at the table

The company’s move to enter the UK clean hydrogen market comes as its plans to develop hydrogen storage as part of the HyNet North West low-carbon cluster consortium gather momentum. The UK government chose HyNet as one of the “track one” projects that will receive government funding and become operational by 2026.

Inovyn’s part of the HyNet project includes 19 salt caverns earmarked for hydrogen storage, with a capacity of 1.3TWh.

“Track one status has given us a seat at the table with the Treasury,” Stevenson says. “We need investment to start next year. We are not looking for government handouts, but we do need the right business framework.”

He says a contracts-for-difference mechanism could offer the right solution. “Having that framework will allow us to invest,” he says.

The Inovyn storage project could be partially online by 2026 to coincide with other elements of HyNet, although would not be fully operational by that point.

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Author: Stuart Penson