UK set to become global centre for energy innovation after £9.9m funding pledge

A project aimed at accelerating the transition to home-grown, decarbonised energy and making Great Britain a global centre for energy innovation has been given a £9.9m cash injection.

Following a successful first stage trial last year, the HyNTS consortium, which includes the UK hydrogen infrastructure firm Element 2, was awarded the investment from the OFGEM strategic innovation fund in order to move into real-world trials.

The next stage of the HyNTS de-blending for transport applications project will create a functioning de-blending and refuelling facility, showcasing how grid-extracted hydrogen can be purified, stored and then used for heavy transport refuelling.

Element 2 said transporting gaseous hydrogen via tankers to hydrogen refuelling stations is expensive over long distances.

Conversely, pipeline transmission provides an economic and safe alternative.

The HyNTS project is designed to develop an economically feasible method of adding smaller quantities of hydrogen to the existing gas network and then extracting the hydrogen at the point of use.

Element 2 said this had the potential to supply its refuelling stations directly from the gas grid, eliminating the need for the road transport of hydrogen.

Brendan Bilton, chief technical officer at Element 2 said: “Through our commitment to providing our customers with the greenest hydrogen at the lowest prices we work with a variety of technology developers in what is a rapidly changing landscape.

“Through our involvement in these exciting projects, Element 2 is in a position to make use of technological advances such as deblending as soon as they are proven feasible.”