As of: April 4, 2024, 6:01 p.m
By: Amy Walker
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Everyone is talking about hydrogen from electrolysis, which has to travel thousands of kilometers to reach us. But there is also untapped potential for green hydrogen here - from manure and manure.
Krefeld/Hof – Green hydrogen is considered an essential key to the energy transition, an indispensable resource for decarbonizing the country’s economy. But currently there is very little of it, although the production itself is not complicated: hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) can be produced from water (H₂O) using electricity. This process is called electrolysis – and uses large amounts of electricity. However, for the resulting hydrogen to be considered renewable, the electricity must also come from renewable sources. The catch is that we need renewable electricity everywhere, not just to produce hydrogen.
But there is also another way to produce renewable hydrogen, which has not yet received much attention: from agricultural waste containing methane. A German company from Bavaria has now received the first certificate to sell biogenic hydrogen.
Hydrogen from manure and manure: a well-known process
“The process of steam reforming has been known for decades. But we are the first who now want to make it economically viable with biogas,” explains the managing director of BtX energy GmbH, Andy Gradel, in an interview with
Ippen.Media
. A so-called reformer is connected to a biogas plant, which then turns the biogas into hydrogen. Biogas consists largely of methane (CH4), so the hydrogen (H) must be separated from the carbon. However, this does not happen using electricity, but rather in the process of steam reforming - heat is added using steam, which triggers the chemical reaction.
The blue container is connected to the biogas plant to produce hydrogen. © BtX
Since March 14, 2024, Andy Gradel has been allowed to sell the hydrogen produced in this way with BtX. This will happen in an initial pilot project in cooperation with a dairy farm in Krefeld. The Schleupen family, who run the farm, decided in 2020 to convert their biogas plant to produce hydrogen. Now all that’s left to do is approve the hydrogen filling system from TÜV. “Hopefully we’ll be fully operational by summer,” says Andy Gradel.
The biohydrogen will then be sold, for example, to logistics companies or bus companies that need the fuel to decarbonize their fleet. “We have 250 animals on this farm, and we can use their manure to fuel five buses with hydrogen,” says the managing director. According to him, there is also a lot of potential when it comes to scaling: 60 to 70 percent of the manure and manure reserves in Germany are currently still unused. “This would mean that five times the entire bus traffic in Germany could be supplied with fuel.”
The important funding program has been on hold since the budget freeze
Andy Gradel makes it clear that converting the entire German bus service to bio-hydrogen is not realistic or even necessarily desirable at the moment. “In the best case scenario, you have a fleet operation within a few kilometers of the plant that can and wants to purchase the hydrogen. What we don't want is for manure to have to be transported halfway across the country to somewhere." But to do this, he and his company first have to prove that the idea is economical with their demo project in Krefeld.
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A hydrogen bus on line M46 with the inscription “Wasserstöffche” drives past an electric bus at the main train station. © Arne Dedert/dpa
And there is the next catch in the story: In order to be able to make money with bio-hydrogen in the future, there have to be companies that invest in systems, but also those that want to buy a fleet of hydrogen buses or trucks. “Anyone who does that now is taking a risk. We actually need funding from the federal government to remove this risk. Since the budget freeze, the appropriate funding program has been on hold,” says Andy Gradel.
And in fact: a website of the Federal Ministry of Transport provides information about the funding program “Investments in systems for the production of renewable fuels” - but no applications are possible. “If you ask the responsible authorities, they will only say that the money has not been released,” says Gradel. Theoretically, exactly the systems that are needed to ramp up the hydrogen market in Germany would be subsidized: “The construction of new generation plants, the retrofitting of existing generation plants and feasibility studies for electricity-based fuels and advanced biofuels will be funded,” the portal informs.
Nevertheless, Andy Gradel is optimistic about the future of bio-hydrogen. “I am sure that by 2030 it will be standard practice to use biogenic hydrogen.” As an energy source, it will be part of the range of possibilities, just as green hydrogen from electrolysis will have a permanent place.