Xinjiang starts construction on green hydrogen plant

(ECNS) -- Construction of a green hydrogen plant with an annual production capacity of 20,000 tons began on Tuesday in Kuqa City of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, according to Sinopec, a state-controlled Chinese corporation.

Costing roughly 3 billion yuan ($470 million), it is China's first ten-thousand-ton-level photovoltaic hydrogen production project. It is composed of five parts, which include photovoltaics, power transmission and transformation, hydrogen production through a water electrolysis system, hydrogen storage and transmission.

This project would incorporate a photovoltaic power station with an installed capacity of 300 MW and an average annual power generation of 618 million kWh, a hydrogen plant for water electrolysis with an annual output of 20, 000 tons, hydrogen storage tanks with a total capacity of about 210, 000 standard cubic meters, and a hydrogen pipeline network that could transmit 28,000 standard cubic meters of hydrogen per hour.

The project is expected to start production in June 2023, with the hydrogen it produces supplied to Sinopec's Tahe refinery in order to replace the current gas-to-hydrogen facilities, which may reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 485,000 tons annually.