Scientific justification of green hydrogen projects - new opportunities for Ukraine
At the international hydrogen conference, scientific work was presented that will become the foundation of a grand hydrogen project in Ukraine. The monograph entitled "Hydrogen. Ecological and energy challenges of the XXI century. Global projects. Implementation pathways", published in early February 2023, was presented by its editor Igor Bagriy, Head of the Department of Geoecology and Geological Survey of the Institute of Geological Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Doctor of Geological Sciences, Professor, and Academician of the Ukrainian National Academy of Oil and Gas.
The monograph provides a strategic action plan for Ukraine on hydrogen production, generation, and delivery to users in Ukraine and Europe. The research summarizes the scientific and practical experience of leading Ukrainian scientists and the Energy Association "UKRAINIAN HYDROGEN COUNCIL".
Presenting his scientific work, Igor Bagriy detailed the latest approaches of scientists that are contained in every chapter of the publication. The first chapter is dedicated to justifying the global natural-ecological and geological conditions of generation, accumulation, and logistic pathways of green hydrogen. The area of Southern Ukraine was not randomly chosen as a region for research regarding the implementation of the future project. Scientists call this region a unique natural complex with the Danube River and the lakes of Kagul, Kartal, Kugurluy, Yalpug, China, Saf'yani, Katlabukh, and Sasik, which form the largest lake region in Ukraine. According to the authors of the monograph, the Danube, whose basin area is 817 thousand km2, can be used as the main energy source for hydrogen production. Other water bodies are suitable for the location of floating solar stations.
By the way, the work also includes the development and justification of projects for the placement of floating solar power stations on water bodies. International experience was used in the development of such projects. For example, South Korea already has floating solar power stations with a total capacity of 4 GW. Similar projects have been implemented in China, Japan, Thailand, and other countries. In addition to saving land resources, such solar power stations contribute to reducing the blooming and reproduction of algae in reservoirs.
Regarding Ukraine, Igor Bagriy is confident that the project developed by the team to generate solar energy using solar panels installed on water bodies with a total area of over 600 km2 has no global analogs. Scientists have also analyzed the hydrogeological conditions of the Western wing of the Black Sea artesian basin and the climatic conditions of the territory and developed climatic maps.
"The climatic map of Ukraine presented in the monograph proves favorable conditions for energy generation of total solar radiation exceeding 4800 MDj/m2. Higher values of this characteristic are only found in certain areas of the steppe Crimea," noted the speaker.
In addition, logistics delivery routes have also been analyzed and presented in diagrams. Not only the existing gas transportation system of Ukraine, fully suitable for transporting hydrogen, was taken into account. The authors also studied the uniquely sized impermeable reservoirs of the Carpathians and Transcarpathia, as well as the salt deposits in the south of the Odessa region, where hydrogen produced could be stored.
The second chapter of the monograph provides a scientific justification for the spatial distribution of hydrogen. The authors introduced and patented an innovative search technology that uses hardware complexes to search for hydrogen. According to Igor Bagriy, this technology is cost-effective and highly efficient, allowing the detection of hydrogen and helium on land, in marine waters, and in areas of mining fields, based on the analysis of a wide range of data, from temperature to gas-geochemical data. This technology helps to determine hydrogen content from one percent, as was recorded by Ukrainian scientists during the research.
A database of gas wells has been created in the Dnipro-Donets Basin, where there is an elevated level of molecular free and dissolved hydrogen in natural gas. Fifty-six gas wells were identified during the study, with hydrogen content ranging from 0.9% to 48%, and these were located near salt formations. It was concluded that wells with elevated hydrogen content require the installation of adsorption units with variable pressure to recover hydrogen from natural gas streams using membrane filters.
The third chapter of the monograph is devoted to the development and implementation of safe search technology for coal deposits. For the first time in global practice, innovative approaches were proposed and substantiated to change the paradigm of coal mining safety, which prevent the occurrence of unpredictable gas-dynamic phenomena and the associated disasters. An implemented and patented technology for identifying hydrogen anomalies was developed to prevent gas-dynamic phenomena and, as a result, material and human casualties.
The fourth chapter is devoted to the study and implementation of safe technology for preventing the embrittlement of metal pipes in areas of hydrogen degassing manifestations during the operation of main gas pipelines. Scientists have proposed a fundamentally new method for monitoring the corrosion process at its inception stage, based on the registration of hydrogen fixation in areas of natural diffusion, which is instrumentally fixed using a special technology and a selective hardware device. The technology's testing allowed for the detection and confirmation of areas of increased hydrogen concentrations in the pipeline's location zones with embrittlement and corrosion foci, by traditional defectoscopy methods, as well as in a test area where corrosion processes with hydrogen background values were not detected.
In conclusion, the speaker noted that Ukrainian scientists have proposed a thorough and competitive strategy for Ukraine to become a leading player in the global search and production of hydrogen, which is unprecedented in the world. Therefore, Ukraine undoubtedly has all the prerequisites to become a superpower in the competition for the production and use of hydrogen.