COP27, from photovoltaics to green hydrogen: the project presented by Hydrozero by Unicusano, IAT S.r.l. and S.R.S. to save over 4 million tons of CO2
In Sharm el-Sheikh, a team of scientists and researchers headed by Hydrozero by Unicusano, the innovative spin-off of the Niccolò Cusano University, created to promote the ecological transition and decarbonization, the National Institute of Technological Applications – IAT S.r.l and S.R.S. Servizi di Ricerche e Sviluppo S.r.l., presents the revolutionary project to produce hydrogen from photovoltaic panels installed in Egypt: with the production of 167 thousand tons per year, there would be positive effects for Egypt, Italy and Europe on the environment, economy, employment and geopolitical situation in the Mediterranean.
Producing clean energy, hydrogen, using thousands of solar panels to be installed on the Egyptian plain, one of the sunniest regions of the world. This is the ambitious project that Hydrozero by Unicusano, IAT and SRS, will present on Monday 14 November at the COP 27 conference on climate change. Giuseppe Cherubini, general manager of the IAT, and Antonio Naviglio, president of S.R.S.
The project aims at exploiting the desert areas in Egypt to produce photovoltaic energy (10.5 MWe in the first phase of the project, 4.5 GWe in a possible configuration of the second phase) by which it’s possible to produce: gaseous hydrogen (330 tons per year in the first phase, 167,000 in the second) to be used both to feed the existing Greenstream pipeline between Alessandria and Taranto, and a liquefaction plant. In this second case, the product will be transported to Taranto, home of the largest steel mill in Europe and a large CO2 emitter, via tank container in the first phase and subsequently through four gas tankers each equipped with three 4,500 m3 spheres.
Part of the electricity and hydrogen will be exploited by Egypt, while most of it will be fed into the Greenstream pipeline that connects Egypt to Italy. Hydrogen transported by sea, on the other hand, will not only be available to Italy, but also to other countries in Central Europe thanks to the identification of hubs. The 167,000 tons of hydrogen obtained will be supplied 25% to Egypt and 75% to Europe, corresponding to 125,000 tons or 1.25% of the value declared by REPowerEU.
“Hydrogen – professor Antonio Naviglio of the S.R.S. explains – has the advantage of not causing carbon release, a fundamental characteristic for the fight against climate change, neither in the production phase, nor in the storage one, nor in the use one. Hydrogen can be used to produce both thermal or electrical energy and useful material for the production of several other products. The world decarbonization programs emphasize the importance of this energy vector, whose market is, today, limited due to the high cost of production “.
According to the estimates of the researchers of Hydrozero by Unicusano, if solar energy were used as a primary source “assuming to produce the same energy (the same amount of hydrogen) with methane-powered plants, with an assumed efficiency of 35% , we would have a CO2 saving of 10,500 tons per year ”. But not only: with the start-up of Phase 2, the scientists of the spin-off claim that, by feeding the hydrogen needs of the Taranto steel plant with a view to its conversion from blast furnace to electric furnace for the production of 2,500,000 tons per ‘year of steel, also providing for a sale to Egypt of 25% of the hydrogen produced, as well as an oversizing of the plants by 5% to cope with losses, “a CO2 saving of 4,500,000 tons per year would be obtained. ”
“The benefits of the project – Hydrozero managers complete – will have positive repercussions on the environment for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, on the economic-employment fabric in Italy and Europe, on the development of a manufacturing and employment capacity in a strategic issue for the future worldwide (supply chain in Italy and Egypt), on the geopolitical stabilization of the Mediterranean area “.
HYDROZERO PROJECT
