CARBON-FREE INDUSTRIAL FACILITY

Abstract

The present invention relates to an industrial installation comprising at least one piece of equipment using hydrogen as well as a local electrolyser producing hydrogen from an electrical source, said electrolyser supplying a compressor delivering hydrogen under a pressure greater than 6 MPa into a local hydrogen storage tank supplying said equipment, characterized in that said equipment is a local hydrogen burner supplied by hydrogen coming from said local hydrogen storage tank. Abstract figure: figure 1

Description

Title of the invention: CARBON-FREE INDUSTRIAL INSTALLATION Field of invention

[0001] The present invention relates to the field of decarbonization of industrial installations using electrical energy from intermittent sources, such as wind turbines, private photovoltaic panels or an electrical network whose operator modulates the tariffs according to parameters such as the difference between the instantaneous production capacity and the instantaneous consumption, or even exploits load shedding solutions allowing it to suspend the power supply to customer equipment during certain periods.

[0002] The reduction of electricity consumption or smoothing of the load curve by controlling demand consists, in the event of an imbalance between electricity supply and demand, of temporarily reducing the physical consumption of a given site or a group of actors (compared to its “normal” consumption).

[0003] Its implementation responds to the fact that, for an electricity network to be healthy, it must always be balanced between supply (production) and demand (consumption). An imbalance can in fact cause the total collapse of the network, or blackout, and numerous breakdowns and cuts.

[0004] To cover the needs, it is therefore necessary to find a solution. However, electricity is an energy source that is difficult to store. It is therefore impossible to build up reserves in summer to meet demand in winter, for example. In addition, given the current tension on the electricity supply, increasing production to deal with the risk of electricity shortages is more difficult, particularly during consumption peaks generally recorded in winter.

[0005] It is known to provide means for storing energy so as to preserve the permanence of the capacity to supply industrial equipment, either by storage batteries, or more recently by the storage of hydrogen produced by electrolysis during periods of availability of electrical energy.

[0006] From an economic perspective, however, storing hydrogen produced from decarbonized electricity for return to the electricity system does not appear to be viable. The cost of producing decarbonized hydrogen by electrolysis is at least around €3 / kg. Taking into account the efficiency of the means used to return this energy to the electricity system (around 40 to 50%), the variable cost of producing electricity from stored hydrogen comes to around €250 / MWh. Finally, for this method to appear competitive compared to a fossil gas power station, the implicit cost of the CO2 emitted would have to be €400 / t, which is not the case. State of the art

[0007] We know in the state of the art the article “Feasible Energy System with Elec-trochemical Hydrogen Energy Storage for Leveling the Received Electricity at Large-Scale Solar Cell Installation” by Tastsuya Okubol, Teruyuki Shimizul, Hyojae Leel, Kei Hasegawal and Manabu Iharalparu in 2018 in - The Electrochemical Society

[0008] ECS Meeting Abstracts, Volume MA2018-02, D02-Photovoltaics for the 21 st Century 14Citation Tatsuya Okubo et al 2018 Meet. Abstr. MA2018-02 728DOI 10.1149 / MA2018-02 / 17 / 728 presents a "local hydrogen" energy storage system. by a system consisting of an electrolysis cell (EC), a fuel cell (FC) and a secondary battery to compensate for the gap due to the electricity supply from large-scale solar cells (SC).

[0009] The CEA report “Hydrogen technologies at the CEA, May 2012” states that “Hydrogen is a way of storing intermittent renewable electricity (photovoltaic / wind): the principle is to use excess electricity during off-peak hours to produce hydrogen and to use the hydrogen obtained: • either to supply industrial users of hydrogen (electronics, chemistry, etc.) who currently use hydrogen produced from fossil fuels; • either to produce electricity using a fuel cell (FC) during peak consumption periods or at times when renewable energy is no longer available; • either to inject it into the natural gas network, which can absorb several percent of hydrogen without risk, which constitutes gigantic quantities of energy given the volume of the natural gas network in France and Europe; • either to supply a local hydrogen distribution network, a service station for example. Disadvantages of the prior art

[0010] The exploitation of the solutions of the prior art, however, comes up against the obstacles constituted by the cost of the energy necessary for the production of hydrogen by local electrolysis from the electricity supplied by the electricity network, or, for low-carbon hydrogen obtained from electricity produced from a renewable energy source, or from a low-carbon source, the versatility of the availability of the electricity necessary for the electrolysis.

[0011] the solution for storing electricity by producing hydrogen is the supply of electricity by a hydrogen fuel cell is penalized by the low energy efficiency (25%) of the loop for transforming electricity into hydrogen and then possibly into synthetic methane for storage, to finally be transformed back into electricity via a gas production plant. The "loop" passing through the fuel cell (or direct combustion of hydrogen in CCGs or TACs if this solution demonstrates its technological feasibility) has a barely better efficiency, of around 35%. Solution provided by the invention

[0012] In order to overcome these drawbacks, the present invention relates to an industrial installation comprising at least one piece of equipment using hydrogen as well as a local electrolyser producing hydrogen from an electrical source, said electrolyser supplying a compressor delivering hydrogen under a pressure greater than 6 MPa into a local hydrogen storage tank supplying said equipment, characterized in that said equipment is a local hydrogen burner supplied by hydrogen coming from said local hydrogen storage tank.

[0013] Advantageously, the operating periods of said electrolyser and said hydrogen burner are desynchronized.

[0014] Preferably, the storage capacity of said tank is determined for the nominal consumption of said burner for a period of between 2 hours and 48 hours.

[0015] Detailed description of a non-limiting example of embodiment

[0016] The present invention will be better understood on reading the following description, concerning a non-limiting example of embodiment illustrated by the appended drawings where:

[0017] [Fig-1] [Fig.l] represents a schematic view of an installation according to the invention. General principle of the invention

[0018] The present invention relates to an installation for locally supplying a source of decarbonized industrial heat from electricity originating either from the electricity network (1) or from green electricity sources such as private wind turbines (2) or photovoltaic panels (3), and implementing a hydrogen burner of a furnace (10).

[0019] The installation according to the invention is designed to reconcile the temporality of access to electrical energy, which depends on climatic conditions (wind power for wind-generated electricity, sunshine for photovoltaic electricity) and economic conditions (variation in the price of electricity from the network depending on the time, load shedding contracts during periods of peak consumption) with the temporality of industrial activity implementing a heating process.

[0020] Direct power supply to an electric furnace would lead to situations of service failure or additional cost of operating an industrial site.

[0021] The direct supply of the hydrogen furnace by a tank involves significant logistics for the supply by hydrogen suppliers and the storage of large volumes to ensure the operation of the site for several days or even weeks.

[0022] The invention consists in locally producing hydrogen by an electrolyser (4) activated episodically when electrical energy is available under optimal conditions. The hydrogen produced locally by electrolysis is compressed by a compressor (5) to a pressure of approximately 35 Mpa, and at least 6 Mpa and stored in a tank (6).

[0023] The tank (6) ensures the transient storage of the hydrogen produced and the supply of the hydrogen furnace (10) during periods of operation requiring the production of heat.

[0024] The hydrogen stored in the tank (6) directly feeds a hydrogen burner. The term "hydrogen burner" will be understood to mean a burner which uses only hydrogen or a burner which operates with a gas-hydrogen mixture, for example a hydrogen plus methane or propane mixture,...

Claims

Claims

1. - Industrial installation comprising at least one piece of equipment using hydrogen as well as a local electrolyser producing hydrogen from an electrical source, said electrolyser supplying a compressor delivering hydrogen under a pressure greater than 6 MPa into a local hydrogen storage tank supplying said equipment, characterized in that said equipment is a local hydrogen burner supplied by hydrogen coming from said local hydrogen storage tank.

2. - Installation according to claim 1 characterized in that the operating periods of said electrolyzer and said hydrogen burner are desynchronized.

3. - Installation according to claim 1 characterized in that the storage capacity of said tank is determined for the nominal consumption of said burner for a period of between 2 hours and 48 hours.

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