With massive intent and investment, Middle Eastern countries, led by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are in pole position to reap the benefits as green hydrogen inches closer to becoming the preferred fuel of the future.
Last week, a study undertaken by Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology, said that almost all air travel within a 1200-kilometre radius could be made with hydrogen-powered aircraft by 2045. The Chalmers project is also working on a heat exchanger, which will enhance this range even further.
Just like its atomic number 1, thus occupying pride of place in the Periodic Table, Hydrogen is the No.1 hope for a cleaner future for planet Earth. Green hydrogen is considered key to all the decarbonisation efforts being carried out. It is 100 percent sustainable, and the only waste emission is water. Hydrogen is also easy to store, and can be transformed into electricity or synthetic gas and used for commercial, industrial or mobility purposes.
The researchers at Chalmers are confident they can have the first short-range hydrogen-powered flight with modifications on existing aircraft models as early as 2028.
Tomas Grönstedt, Professor at Chalmers University of Technology, and Director of the competence centre TechForH2 at Chalmers, said: “If everything falls into place, the commercialisation of hydrogen flight can go really fast now. As early as 2028, the first commercial hydrogen flights in Sweden could be in the air.”
Storing hydrogen is a big challenge that scientists face but the Swedish research, led by doctoral student Christian Svensson in Grönstedt’s research group, showcased a new fuel tank that could hold enough fuel, was insulated enough to hold the super-cold liquid hydrogen and at the same time was lighter than today’s fossil-based fuel tank systems.
Heat exchangers are an equally important part of the whole hydrogen aviation puzzle. To keep the fuel systems lightweight, the hydrogen needs to be in liquid form. This means that the hydrogen is kept supercool in the aircraft, typically around -250°C.
To transfer the heat between the supercool hydrogen and the engine, new heat exchangers are needed and the researchers at Chalmers are close to one that works. The patent-pending technology “takes advantage of hydrogen’s low storage temperature to cool engine parts, and then uses waste heat from the exhaust gases to preheat the fuel several hundred degrees before it is injected into the combustion chamber”.
Carlos Xisto, Associate Professor at the Division of Fluid Mechanics at Chalmers, and one of the authors of the study, added: “Every degree increase in temperature reduces fuel consumption and increases range. We were able to show that short- and medium-haul aircraft equipped with the new heat exchanger could reduce their fuel consumption by almost eight percent. Considering that an aircraft engine is a mature and well-established technology, it is a very good result from a single component.”
Green Hydrogen and Middle East
All this is exciting news and could lead to an acceleration of the adoption of green hydrogen around the world.
Most experts are now in agreement that green hydrogen will be essential to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. Climate-warming emissions from transportation, electricity generation and industry are difficult to bring down, and hydrogen is the hope.
Which puts the Middle East in the thick of action once again. The biggest producers of oil in the world are also determined to be the biggest producers of clean energy sources.
The UAE plans to produce 1.4 million tonnes per annum of low-carbon hydrogen by 2031, which is now part of its national hydrogen strategy that was formulated ahead of COP28.
In a study ‘Hydrogen – From Hype to Reality’, Dubai Future Foundation said the emirate’s ‘Producer & Hub’ strategy could add up to AED32 billion annually to Dubai’s GDP by 2050, create over 120,000 jobs between now and 2050, and offset CO2 emissions equivalent to 84 days per year of the UAE’s crude oil production by 2050.
Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s clean energy company, has also established a green hydrogen unit and hoping to produce 1 million tonnes by 2030.
Mohammad Abdelqader El Ramahi, Masdar’s Chief Green Hydrogen Officer, said during the World Future Energy Summit said his company will produce half of its target in Abu Dhabi and rest in Egypt and Morocco and has ambitions to invest and expand in Europe, America, and Balkan countries.
Masdar has signed a $16.25 billion partnership with Spain’s Iberdrola to evaluate the development of offshore wind and green hydrogen projects in key markets including Germany, the UK and the US, and also with Austria’s Verbund Green Hydrogen with a view to build Europe’s largest green hydrogen production plants in central Spain.
The UAE also has a pilot high-speed green hydrogen refueling station, called ‘H2GO’, to test a fleet of zero-emission hydrogen-powered vehicles. Operated by ADNOC Distribution, it will work with a fleet of hydrogen vehicles provided by Toyota, Al Futtaim Motors and BMW, and will be tested by Tawasul, the Abu Dhabi taxi company.
With a new plant under construction in Neom, Saudi Arabia has already made public its plans to become the world’s largest green hydrogen producer. The Neom plant is targeting a daily production target of 650 tonnes when production starts in 2026.
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