Specific Challenge:
In order to fight climate change, the need to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases will force the chemical industry to find alternate paths to the conventional fossil carbon sources. A significant number of existing and future value chains require carbon monoxide (CO) in addition to hydrogen. Even at high rates of direct electrification scenarios that include the use of biomass, there is still a demand for carbon (C). At EU level, this is in the range of millions of tons/year [62] (corresponding to GWs of energy demand if derived from CO2) due to following reasons:
Carbon is either part of a product directly from crude oil or derived from fossil syngas (H2 + CO). Similarly to hydrogen, most of the syngas nowadays is produced by steam methane reformers (SMR) which emit more than 6 kg of CO2 per kg of syngas. Industrial Power-to-X Plants require quantities of syngas in scales of minimum 20 MW while the standard scale will be more than 100MW.
The general challenge is to supply green syngas at a competitive cost and in the MW range in order to be relevant to the industrial applications that will still rely on carbon in the future.
High temperature steam electrolysis based on Solid Oxide Cell (SOC) technology can perform the co-electrolysis of CO2 to CO along with hydrogen production. This directly creates syngas (H2 + CO) at high system efficiencies of 80% (LHV SynGas/kWh AC) and high conversion rates (>80%), already demonstrated at low TRL by previous FCH 2 JU projects and national projects (e.g. Kopernikus [63] or ECo [64]).
The specific challenge is to scale up to the MW range and advance it to a TRL that is relevant for industrial syngas consumers while getting the cost of green syngas close to the steam reformer level.
[62] https://cefic.org/app/uploads/2018/12/Cefic_FactsAnd_Figures_2018_Industrial_BROCHURE_TRADE.pdf
[63] https://www.kopernikus-projekte.de/en/projects/power2x
[64] http://www.eco-soec-project.eu/
Scope:This topic calls for the development, manufacturing, commissioning and operation of an industrial size co-electrolysis system, based on SOC technology. This should be demonstrated in an industrial environment with the following goals:
The values above are expressed for the standard syngas composition of 2H2:CO. Different use cases might require different stoichiometry, e.g. higher CO content. For those cases, equivalent targets should be developed and proposed by the applicants.
The consortium should include the co-electrolysis system manufacturer and the industrial syngas consumer.
TRL at start: 5 and TRL at the end of the project: 7
Any safety-related event that may occur during execution of the project shall be reported to the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) dedicated mailbox JRC-PTT-H2SAFETY@ec.europa.eu , which manages the European hydrogen safety reference database, HIAD and the Hydrogen Event and Lessons LEarNed database, HELLEN. A draft safety plan at project level should be provided in the proposal and further updated during project implementation (deliverable to be reviewed by the European Hydrogen Safety Panel (EHSP)).
Activities developing test protocols and procedures for the performance and durability assessment of fuel cell or electrolyser components should foresee a collaboration mechanism with JRC (see section 3.2.B "Collaboration with JRC"), in order to support EU-wide harmonisation. Test activities should adopt the already published FCH 2 JU harmonized testing protocols to benchmark performance and quantify progress at programme level.
The maximum FCH 2 JU contribution that may be requested is EUR 5 million. This is an eligibility criterion – proposals requesting FCH 2 JU contribution above this amount will not be evaluated.
Expected duration: 4 years
Expected Impact:The project is expected to demonstrate a path forward to the reduction of carbon-emissions from the chemical industry in EU. The most important impact is the industrial operation of the world´s largest co-electrolyser, which will be perceived as “MW scale” in comparison to legacy water electrolysis, although it may take in less than one MW electric power due to its high efficiency.
Due to the scale-up factor it is expected that industrial components will be used offering a reduction in the overall costs of a co-electrolysis system.
A very important impact is the increased trustworthiness for this technology by achieving the following goals:
With the successful completion of such a project, co-electrolysis shall show its potential to largely contribute to sectoral integration as well as grid balancing by utilizing existing infrastructure and by enlarging the reach of green hydrogen to industrial areas that are today only accessible for fossil syngas or fossil hydrocarbons.
The conditions related to this topic are provided in the chapter 3.3 of the FCH2 JU 2020 Annual Work Plan and in the General Annexes to the Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2018– 2020 which apply mutatis mutandis.