ACME Group on Monday said that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Germany’s Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies to collaborate on a feasibility study to explore joint development of large-scale hydrogen supply chains.
The supply chains, from ACME’s projects in Oman to supply hubs in Europe, will utilise the Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHC) technology. Both parties also intend to extend the partnership to evaluate the hydrogen value chain from the US to Europe.
The development assumes importance as storage and transportation of green hydrogen is critical for developing supply chains. Hydrogenious’ LOHC technology enables safe and cost-effective storage and transportation of hydrogen using existing liquid fuel infrastructure.
“Oman benefits from abundant renewable energy (RE) resources such as solar and onshore wind while the US Inflation Reduction Act offers production incentives leading to competitive hydrogen production cost. The green hydrogen produced by ACME in these projects can be stored in LOHC and transported by tanker to Europe to supply and decarbonize industrial offtakers, energy and mobility,” ACME Group said.
Hydrogenious’ LOHC technology is perfectly suited for large-scale hydrogen imports via maritime supply chains, enabling viable and cost-effective import vectors to Europe. By safely binding hydrogen to the thermal oil benzyltoluene (LOHC-BT) in a chemical process, the volatile green molecules can be efficiently stored and transported at ambient pressure and temperature using the existing liquid fuel infrastructure, it added.
“While some will continue to challenge the economic and technical feasibility, we have taken conclusive decisions on our Oman project and partnering with Hydrogenious to develop efficient logistics using LOHC is the next step in delivering a cost effective value proposition for our customers.” ACME’s Group President and Director Ashwani Dudeja said.
Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies Chief Commercial Officer Toralf Pohl emphasised that due to its inherent safety, LOHC-BT is particularly suited for handling hydrogen in ports and urban environments. It is hardly flammable, very stable, and has a competitive volumetric storage density, enabling large-scale, long-distance hydrogen value chains without hydrogen losses.
“Our collaboration will contribute to making clean hydrogen from the MENA region and the US available to European off-takers in the mid to long term,” he added.