Will Generate Methanol Using Captured Carbon Dioxide and Renewable Electricity
Mississauga, Ontario – January 26, 2015 – Hydrogenics Corporation (NASDAQ:HYGS; TSX:HYG) ("Hydrogenics" or "the Company"), a leading developer and manufacturer of hydrogen generation and hydrogen-based fuel cell power modules, today announced that it will supply a 1MW electrolyzer and provide engineering expertise to a consortium of companies working on the European project “MefCO2” (methanol fuel from CO2) in Germany. The application will take excess electricity from intermittent renewable energy sources, generate green hydrogen, and then create methanol using a low-carbon footprint production plant and carbon dioxide emissions from an existing coal-fired power plant.
“This project will use our most advanced PEM technology, developed specifically for utility-scale Power-to-Gas applications, and turn carbon dioxide into energy," said Daryl Wilson, CEO of Hydrogenics. "Methanol production from green hydrogen represents a very promising way to ‘decarbonize’ parts of the traditional fuel industry as well as chemical sector. Hydrogenics looks forward to the results of this energy storage demonstration project to further broaden the market for our electrolyzer technology in the production of renewable fuels.”
The facility will capture carbon dioxide from the emissions of a coal-fired power plant in Essen, Germany owned by STEAG Gmbh, which operates a number of regional power plants and distributed energy facilities. Hydrogenics will provide a 1 MW electrolyzer that, powered by intermittent renewable energy, will produce 200 cubic meters of hydrogen per hour. The hydrogen and captured carbon dioxide will then be catalytically converted into methanol, a common chemical feedstock used in gasoline blending, for biodiesel production, and the manufacture of chemical derivatives.
The MefCO2 consortium consists of Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Europe, the Laboratory of Catalysis and Reaction Engineering of the National Institute of Chemistry Slovenia, the Cardiff Catalysis Institute, Carbon Recycling International, the University of Genoa, the University of Duisburg Essen, i-Deals, and Hydrogenics. The project has a budget of 11 million Euros and is partially funded by a grant from the EU Horizon2020 research program* managed by the Spire public private partnership. The project will last three to four years and involves the design, building and testing of systems to demonstrate the utilization of surplus and intermittent renewable energy sources and waste CO2 for the production of methanol.
*The project “Synthesis of Methanol from Carbon Dioxide captured using Surplus Electricity" is funded under the EU SPIRE2 - Horizon 2020 fund under the Grant agreement no: 637016.