(Lingen / Germany) – The energy company RWE has commissioned electrolyzers with a capacity of 14 megawatts (MW) at its Emsland gas-fired power plant in Lingen, northern Germany. Using electricity from renewable sources, the plants could produce up to 270 kilograms of green hydrogen per hour.
The pilot electrolyzer consists of a Sunfire alkaline electrolyzer (ten megawatts) and a PEM electrolyzer (four megawatts) designed and built by Linde and ITM Power. © RWE AG
The pilot plant consists of two parts : a ten-megawatt alkaline electrolyzer from Sunfire and a 4-MW plant designed and built by Linde using a PEM electrolyzer (PEM: proton exchange membrane) from ITM Power. RWE intends to gain experience with these two electrolysis technologies for future large-scale industrial plants.
The operating company "Nukleus Green H2," a subsidiary of RWE AG, received approval in September 2023 to construct and operate two electrolyzers on the site. The first 100-megawatt plant is already under construction just a few meters from the pilot plant and is scheduled to go into operation in 2025. A consortium of industry and academia plans to build an approximately 130-kilometer-long pipeline network from Lingen to Gelsenkirchen as part of the "GET H2" project. This test pipeline will gather data on the transport and storage of hydrogen produced by RWE in Lingen. The goal is to install a total production capacity of 300 megawatts by 2027.
Gas station from mid-2025
The hydrogen produced by the pilot plant will initially be mixed into the fuel for the gas turbine of power plant block D as part of an on-site test program. From mid-2025, hydrogen-powered vehicles could also be refueled there. Construction work on a filling station and a filling station for the hydrogen has begun.
"In the coming years, we will continue to expand the production of green hydrogen here at the site in order to make green molecules available to industrial customers," said Markus Krebber, CEO of RWE AG, at the commissioning in the presence of Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck, Lower Saxony's Prime Minister Stephan Weil and Lower Saxony's Environment Minister Christian Meyer.
Lower Saxony as a hydrogen center
Lower Saxony will become "the center for the production, import, storage, transport and use of hydrogen," says Prime Minister Stephan Weil. 50 percent of the green hydrogen production in Germany recently approved by the EU comes from this state. Now it is important to stimulate demand from industry and "strengthen the framework conditions for using electricity from renewable energies in a more targeted manner before grid bottlenecks occur, instead of regulating them."
The pilot electrolysis plant that has been put into operation was funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Environment with eight million euros. In July, RWE received funding commitments from the federal government and the state of Lower Saxony totaling more than 300 million euros for the construction of the 2 MW electrolyzer as part of the GET H490 Nukleus project.
Photo above
RWE is now producing hydrogen at the Lingen power plant site. © RWE AG
