In recent years, the major policies on hydrogen energy have been one after another.
In April 2020, National Energy Administration officially included hydrogen energy in the energy category in the "Energy Law of the People's Republic of China (Draft for Comments)". Many provinces and cities included relevant contents of hydrogen energy development in their plans for the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, and initially established a policy and industrial framework for hydrogen energy development.
In March 2022, National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration jointly issued the "Medium- and Long-term Plan for the Development of the Hydrogen Energy Industry (2021-2035)", further clarifying the role positioning of hydrogen energy in my country's energy system and its important role in the process of green and low-carbon transformation, and providing an action guide for the high-quality development of hydrogen energy.
Just as many people use the knowledge learned from junior high school physics textbooks and talk about hydrogen terror with the fresh words "hydrogen embrittlement" and "explosion limit high" I heard online, the largest supplier of refined oil and petrochemical products and the second largest oil and gas producer - Sinopec has already prepared for the future and started the layout in the hydrogen energy field. Sinopec publicly stated: " Sinopec is committed to building China's first hydrogen energy company and becoming the company with the largest number of hydrogen refueling stations in the world."
Why is Sinopec eating what is in the bowl and looking at what is in the pot? Isn’t it good to produce gasoline and natural gas well? Why do we need to wade into the muddy waters of hydrogen energy? Because the prospects for hydrogen energy are too broad, Sinopec has unique conditions for developing hydrogen energy.
What many people don’t know is that hydrogen is divided into many types, such as industrial by-products, low-purity gray hydrogen, blue hydrogen produced from fossil fuels and equipped with CCS devices, green hydrogen made from electrolyzed water , etc. Generally speaking, the hydrogen used in hydrogen fuel automobile requires green hydrogen with a purity of more than 99%. However, the cost of producing these hydrogen is high without exception, except for gray hydrogen. You can refer to the following hydrogen production cost data in 2019. The cost of producing hydrogen by electrolyzing water is as high as 40-50 yuan per kilogram. However, this problem has been solved by Sinopec. This is the confidence of Sinopec in the large-scale layout of the hydrogen energy industry.
. In the oil and gas production process, Sinopec will produce a large number of gray hydrogen by-products. The cost of these by-products is very low because they are produced by the way. How to make good use of these gray hydrogen is a difficult problem. With the invention of Sinopec's low-cost hydrogen purification technology, these gray hydrogen can become green hydrogen with a purity of more than 99.9% and be used to drive hydrogen fuel vehicles. The first high-purity hydrogen production demonstration device with Sinopec's independent intellectual property rights was successfully put into production at Shanghai Gaoqiao Petrochemical this year. Sinopec has not disclosed the cost of hydrogen purification for the time being, but the industry believes that it is far less than the 10 yuan per kilogram of coal-to-hydrogen.
In addition to the purification of gray hydrogen, Sinopec has also put into production a major project in Xinjiang, which is the construction site of the Kuqa photovoltaic green hydrogen production project in Xinjiang. The entire photovoltaic project covers an area of more than 9,500 mu, equivalent to the size of more than 900 football fields. It is expected to produce 20,000 tons of green hydrogen throughout the year. Cao Jie, deputy general manager of Sinopec Tahe Refining and Chemical Company, revealed that the cost of photovoltaic electrolytic hydrogen production is about 18 yuan per kilogram.
and the volume of 1 kilogram of hydrogen under standard conditions (0℃, a standard atmospheric pressure) is about 11.2 cubic meters. In terms of conversion, the cost of hydrogen production is about 1.6 yuan per standard square. Taking Toyota MIRAI as an example, 0.55 kilograms of hydrogen consumed per 100 kilometers. In other words, the cost of hydrogen per kilometer is only 10 cents. Of course, only the hydrogen production cost is calculated here, and the transportation and operation cost is not calculated. However, as the cost of hydrogen production continues to decline, the driving cost of hydrogen fuel vehicles in the future is as low as that of electric car . In addition, the charging speed of full blood resurrection in 3 minutes has obvious advantages compared to electric cars.
Many people can’t figure out a little bit, why do we need to use solar energy to generate electricity and then use it to electrolyze water to produce hydrogen? Because the electricity emitted by solar energy has randomness, volatility, phase and other problems, direct connection to the grid will increase the grid regulation burden, and in severe cases, it will cause grid instability.Moreover, electricity is not easy to store, and a large number of batteries are required to build a charging station. It can be stored more easily by converting it into hydrogen. Therefore, 20% of the electricity emitted by the Kuche project is used to connect to the grid, and 80% is used to electrolyze water to make hydrogen.
In addition to the layout of hydrogen production, Sinopec has currently built 83 hydrogen refueling stations, making it the company with the largest number of hydrogen refueling stations in the world, and the number of hydrogen refueling stations nationwide is only 270. In other words, Sinopec has built 30% of the world's hydrogen refueling stations. By 2025, Sinopec will build 1,000 hydrogen refueling stations or oil-hydrogen mixing stations. In other words, in the next three years, Sinopec will plan to build more than 900 hydrogen refueling stations and oil-hydrogen combined stations.
So what are the obstacles to the development of hydrogen energy? Of course, for example, the price of hydrogen fuel vehicles remains high. Just like the initial electric vehicles, the production scale is small and the production cost is high. With the increase in production scale and technological progress, the cost will gradually decrease, but this is a long process.
For example, the cost of large-scale transportation and storage of hydrogen is relatively high, and hydrogen requires low-temperature pressurized liquid storage and transportation. Therefore, although the production cost has been greatly reduced, the transportation and storage costs still push up the price of hydrogen.
For example, the construction of a hydrogen refueling network still has a long way to go. Referring to the ratio of 300 million fuel vehicles to 119,000 gas stations, the ratio of hydrogen fuel vehicles to hydrogen refueling stations must reach at least 2,500 to 1.
However, the prospects for hydrogen energy are very broad. Its large-scale application will greatly reduce our dependence on fossil energy. Malacca Strait can no longer hold our throats. Although the road is long and difficult, it will definitely come when you move. A beautiful hydrogen energy society will eventually slowly come to us.
