Howden, a leading global provider of mission critical air and gas handling products, technologies and services, will support the important development of a green hydrogen infrastructure in Etrez, France: HyPSTER – the Hydrogen Pilot STorage for large Ecosystem Replication. The contract will see Howden supply a hydrogen compression and tube trailer filling solution.
The project aims to demonstrate the feasibility of underground hydrogen storage, support the development of the hydrogen economy in Europeand ultimately lower the economy’s carbon usage.
Located north-west of Bourg-en-Bresse, the critical demonstration facility intends to assess, for the first time, the link in the hydrogen value chain for underground storage. It will also assess industrial-scale green hydrogen production and storage in salt caverns and the technical and economic reproducibility of the process to other sites throughout Europe.
As part of the development, Howden will supply a containerised high-pressure diaphragm compressor and a tube trailer filling station. The reliability, efficiency and safety delivered by Howden’s compression solution is matched with the large-scale hydrogen storage and distribution system requirements and will also meet storage injection, extraction and storage conditions.
The facility is France’s leading natural gas storage site in salt caverns in terms of capacity. It will rely on local renewable energy (photovoltaic, hydraulic) to produce 400 kg of green hydrogen per day, the equivalent of the consumption of 16 hydrogen buses.
The project was launched earlier this year, with a subsurface and surface engineering study, which precedes the field-testing phase. It is supported by seven partners with complementary expertise: STORENGY, INERIS, Armines/Polytechnique, INOVYN, ESK, ELEMENT Energy, AXELERA.
Construction of the electrolysis unit for on-site green hydrogen production will commence in 2022.