Anglian Water has received enquiries from potential hydrogen generators that would require an extra 60 mega litres of water every day (Ml/d) – around 5% of total demand.
The company has warned that the extra demands placed on water supplies by hydrogen production have not been factored into PR24 plans, which could result in planning permission being refused for new hydrogen projects over the next five years.
Ed Richardson, water supply option developer at Anglian, told the Drinking Water Quality Conference this week that this presented a significant challenge to secure new water supplies.
He pointed out that many of the hydrogen project currently planned for the UK are in some of the most water-stressed area of the country, including the Midlands and South East as well as the East of England.
“These people are going to be coming knocking on our door asking for water and in most of the country, we haven’t got it”, he said.
Last year’s Energy Security Strategy doubled the UK target of hydrogen production to 10GW by 2030, with at least half of this coming from “green” hydrogen, which is produced by electrolysing water using renewable power.
Water is needed for both the process of electrolysing and for cooling. In general 9kg of water is needed to produce 1kg of hydrogen, Richardson said.
He said: “That equates to almost half a mega litre demand for a fairly modest 100MW hydrogen production facility. We at Anglian Water alone have received enquiries that total 60 Ml/d of demand, which is pretty huge.”
He said over the next five years he expected to see a plethora of applications being submitted for hydrogen generation, adding: “That presents us with a problem in that water companies are well on the way to finishing off their PR24 plans and therefore none of this has been accounted for. So it’s going to be tricky for some of these projects going through the planning process to actually demonstrate they’ve got secure, adequate water supply. At the same time it’s an important part of the UK’s decarbonisation strategy. So we have a mismatch.”
As well as the issue of quantity the sector also faces the challenge of producing the right quality of water for hydrolysis. The minimum for this is ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) Type 2 deionised water, however the ideal is Type 1, which has far higher electrical resistivity and lower levels of sodium and chlorides.
Given that water companies may struggle to produce enough Type 1 deionised water, Richardson said there was a risk of a “two-tier system where water companies can supply some water but the production facility is going to have to apply its own enhanced treatment”.
Richardson highlighted other sources for water, including desalination, new reservoirs or producers carrying out their own abstraction but said there were obvious drawbacks for each.
But he urged: “We need to get these hydrogen producers involved so that we can share the resource rather than compete for the resource.”
Anglian is beginning to produce its own hydrogen with an integrated electrolyser being introduced at Milton Water Recycling Centre in Cambridge. It is anticipated that up to 91kg of fuel cell grade hydrogen, suitable for use with hydrogen vehicles, will be generated each day when the facility is operating at full capacity.