Kawasaki Heavy Industries, a Japanese engineering business, is creating a small-scale power generation unit for domestic refiner Seibu Oil that will be co-fired by hydrogen and regasified LNG, with a commissioning date of August this year.
KHI stated it is currently constructing a 34MW power plant in an undisclosed site that can burn 20-50 percent hydrogen with gas. Seibu Oil has been tight-lipped on the project. Yamaguchi has a refinery with a capacity of 120,000 barrels per day.
This is KHI’s first commercially viable hydrogen power project. In 2017, the company completed a 1MW hydrogen co-generation pilot plant in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, west Japan.
In Japan, demand for hydrogen-based electricity is increasing, especially since the city-state promised in October of last year to become carbon-neutral by 2050. The country’s hydrogen demand is expected to reach 3 million tons per year in 2030 and 20 million tons per year by 2050.
Erex, a Japanese renewable energy company, is also working on a 300-kilowatt-class hydrogen-fired power plant, with plans to begin operations in the April 2021-March 2022 fiscal year. According to the business, the plant would be Japan’s first commercial hydrogen-dedicated power plant.
