The world's biggest green hydrogen plant and its future

Hi, I am in Xinjiang again. This time, I am lucky to visit the world’s largest green hydrogen producing plant in Kuqa in the southern part of Xinjiang.

This is a place I really want to see by my eyes. Green hydrogen technology is like a magic in my mind. It uses solar or wind power to turn water into hydrogen, which is now more and more widely used in transportation and other industries.

This Sinopec Xinjiang Kuqa Green Hydrogen Demonstration Project is currently the world’s biggest and the first of such a production capability. It produces 20,000 tonnes of hydrogen annually, only by consuming solar power and water, with no emission at all. It is magical, right?

We have more and more cars and industrial vehicles now using hydrogen power. Cars with 5 kg hydrogen can run about 500 km. It means the hydrogen produced by this plant can drive 4 million cars to run 500 km theoraticaly, and totally without emission.

By producing 20,000 tonnes of hydrogen as energy through water electrolysis can reduce CO2 emission by 485,000 tonnes. If we plant 300,000 trees, they can absorb such amount of CO2. So this plant equals to 300,000 trees, in CO2 emission reduction.

During the production process, 300 MW photovoltaic power were used. That is why it is called green hydrogen, which means only renewable energy is used and no emissions.

I asked the engineers in the plant about the importance of it which is seen as a demonstration project. If it succeeds, more will follow. They told me that, the success of this plant shows that the technology works, especially in such a big production scale. It has big impact on the hydrogen energy equipment manufacturing industry in China.

It is not easy. Tonnes of problems related to production safety, cost reduction and others were solved and many still need to be improved. Before green hydrogen can be more widely used, a lot of things need to be done, such as the refilling stations and other facilities to be built.

Engineers told me, Sinopec has built 128 hydrogen refilling stations along highways linking Beijing and Tianjin, Chengdu and Chongqing, Shanghai and Jiaxing and some other cities. Sinopec, the largest oil and petrochemical products supplier in China, now becomes world leading hydrogen power company which is running most hydrogen refilling stations in the world. It reflects the green transformation of China’s traditional fossil fuel industries.

I am so excited to learn all these and cannot help to sharing them with you. Hope we can have more discussions about green hydrogen and the green future of us.