'World's largest PEM green hydrogen project' announced in China, backed by $4.5bn of investment
Nation can produce cheap alkaline electrolysers, but is behind the West when it comes to proton-exchange-membrane machines
A Chinese public-private consortium is investing 33bn yuan ($4.5bn) into what it claims will be the largest green hydrogen project using proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers, according to local reports.
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The project, to be located near the city of Fengzhen in Inner Mongolia, will produce up to 50,000 tonnes of green hydrogen a year from 3GW of wind and solar power.
However, while the consortium — made up of the Fengzhen municipal government, state-owned China Power Construction (PowerChina) Kunming Institute, and Tsinghua University spin-out Rongke Hydrogen Energy — claims the facility will be the world’s largest using PEM technology, it has not disclosed exactly how much electrolyser capacity it plans to install.
The 50,000-tonne figure suggests an electrolyser of around 500MW, which would only require about 1GW of wind and solar power, so the project may also be providing as much as 2GW of renewable energy to the grid.
The Chinese consortium indicates that it plans to use PEM electrolysers made in China.
While the country has led on alkaline electrolysers, producing machines that are as much as 75% cheaper than Western equivalents, it has been slow to develop PEM technologies, which are newer and more expensive than alkaline, but are said to be better at quickly ramping up and down when linked directly to variable renewable enertgy.