西门子将探索利用风能生产氢气

据世界石油8月31日消息称，西门子可再生能源公司(Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA)已着眼于未来，其风力涡轮机可能在制造氢气方面发挥关键作用。

该公司于今年早些时候推出了世界上最大的风力涡轮机，计划在丹麦启动一个试点项目，以测试其机器如何为燃料生产提供动力，这被视为消除运输和重工业碳排放的关键。欧盟已经制定了清洁能源的宏伟计划，并在今年早些时候将其置于绿色协议的中心位置。

西门子首席执行官Andreas Nauen星期四在接受采访时说，该试点项目正在公司位于丹麦西部布兰德附近进行建设。它将包括一个3兆瓦的风力涡轮机，它将为400千瓦的电解槽提供动力，该电解槽将水中的氢原子与氧原子分开。

Nauen表示：“我们将首次将两种技术结合在一起。” Nauen今年6月接任首席执行官，此前他曾领导该公司的海外部门。“这不是为了大量生产氢，而是为了测试两者的结合。”

这可能是一个引人注目的模式。丹麦公用事业公司Orsted A/S已经在为其风力发电场开发多个氢气项目，荷兰皇家壳牌公司计划在荷兰海岸修建一个公园来生产天然气。制造和销售氢燃料可以为风力发电项目提供新的收入来源，从而抵消电力市场有时波动带来的风险。

Nauen说，以前没有人在没有电网连接的情况下单独使用风能来生产氢气。这个项目将为扩大这项技术在陆地和海上更大的涡轮机和风力发电场的应用提供重要的见解。

今年早些时候，西门子宣布计划建造一个14兆瓦的海上涡轮机，其风轮直径为222米（728英尺），比以前的记录大几米。

该公司预计将从10月至12月在氢试验中进行测试，然后在1月开始生产氢。丹麦一家名为Everfuel的氢燃料公司将为在哥本哈根使用的出租车和公共汽车等车辆提供氢燃料。

欧洲各国政府计划斥资数十亿美元扶持国内氢气生产行业。这笔资金可以帮助扩大生产规模，降低成本。

曹海斌 摘译自 世界石油

原文如下：

Siemens to explore leveraging wind power for hydrogen production

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA has one eye on the future where its wind turbines could play a key role in creating hydrogen.

The company, which earlier this year launched the world’s biggest wind turbine, plans to start a pilot project in Denmark to test how its machines could power production of the fuel seen as key to eliminating carbon emissions from transportation and heavy industries. The European Union has big plans for the clean-burning gas and the bloc placed it at the center of its Green Deal earlier this year.

The pilot project is under construction near Siemens Gamesa’s Danish headquarters in Brande, western Denmark, Chief Executive Officer Andreas Nauen said in an interview on Thursday. It will include a 3-megawatt wind turbine that will power a 400-kilowatt electrolyzer, a machine that separates the hydrogen atoms in water from oxygen atoms.

“We will be for the first time combining the two technologies,” said Nauen, who took over as CEO in June after leading the company’s offshore division. “It is not to produce hydrogen in big quantities, but to test the combination of both.”

It could be a compelling model. Danish utility Orsted A/S is already exploring a number of hydrogen projects for its wind farms and Royal Dutch Shell Plc plans to produce the gas from a park it’s going to build off the Dutch coast. Making and selling hydrogen could provide a new source of revenue for wind projects that would offset the risk in the sometimes volatile electricity market.

No one before has used wind power alone, without a grid connection, to produce hydrogen, Nauen said. It’s a project that will provide insight that could be crucial to scaling up the technology to much larger turbines and wind farms both on land and at sea.

Earlier this year, Siemens Gamesa announced plans to build a 14-megawatt offshore turbine with a rotor diameter of 222 meters (728 feet), a few meters larger than the previous record.

The company expects to conduct testing at the hydrogen pilot from October to December and then start hydrogen production in January. A Danish hydrogen fuel company called Everfuel will distribute the gas for vehicles including taxis and buses to use in Copenhagen.

European governments aim to spend billions of dollars to help nurture domestic industries to produce hydrogen. The funding could help scale production and bring down costs.