CIMC Raffles is rapidly diversifying from offshore engineering to green energy and carbon-free products to help the world’s second largest energy user lower its carbon footprint.
The yard is ready to use worldwide knowledge to construct a complete offshore hydrogen energy solution with its talent pool in Shenzhen and Yantai cities.
CIMC Raffles plans to use offshore wind-powered electrolysers to split hydrogen from desalinated seawater to make green hydrogen.
The goal is to deliver a complete offshore hydrogen energy system that integrates hydrogen production with offshore wind farms, photovoltaics, and subsea pipelines. Offshore hydrogen chemical facilities that convert hydrogen into green ammonia or methanol for storage and export are planned. Hydrogen can solve long-distance shipping and sea transportation as ammonia or methanol.
CIMC Raffles has taken a key step toward becoming a provider of alkaline electrolysis systems for green hydrogen generation, which uses renewable energy to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.
The yard’s hydrogen-focused subsidiary GH2 Technology began alkaline electrolysis green hydrogen construction this week at its hydrogen production base in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province.
The single-stack alkaline electrolysis system produces 1200 Nm3/h of 99.999%-pure hydrogen.
The energy-efficient electrolyser reduces running costs by 10% to 20% with a cell stack power consumption of 4.3kwh/Nm3.
CIMC Raffles says the tiny alkaline electrolyser weights 39.8 tonnes, 20% to 30% lighter than a standard one. Traditional nickel-catalysed thermal spraying pores extremely active non-precious metal electrodes, HER and OER. GH2 Technology can produce 2000Nm3/h of hydrogen now and 3000Nm3/h afterwards. GH2 Technology bought Yangzhou Chungdean Hydrogen Equipment, a hydrogen equipment manufacturer, last year.
Electroliser-based hydrogen can generate 1 gigawatt of green power at Yangzhou. By 2025, two more bases in Shenzhen and Yantai will increase green electricity output to 5–10 GW. According to a China Hydrogen Alliance research, Chinese companies plan to establish 161 green hydrogen projects, 12 of which are already producing 2.31 million tonnes per year. 22 are being built. China’s hydrogen demand will rise to 35 million tpa in 2030 and 60 million tpa by 2050, accounting for 10% of energy demand, according to the report.
