Refinery investing £45m in pioneering hydrogen-powered furnace

Essar Stanlow refinery

Oil refinery group Essar Oil UK is to invest £45m in a new furnace at its Stanlow plant in Cheshire which will use hydrogen as its fuel source, in a UK first.

The scheme, subject to planning approval, involves the decommissioning of three existing furnaces, and their replacement with a single piece of plant.

It comes after the launch of a joint venture involving Essar last month, Vertex Hydrogen, which will bring a £1bn investment over five years to reduce emissions, including new hydrogen production plants at Stanlow, which will be part of the HyNet North West decarbonisation cluster.

The new furnace, which is currently being fabricated in Thailand, will offer several benefits for the plant, and the surrounding area, including lower carbon emissions.

It will be unique to the UK in its capability to run entirely off hydrogen. It will deliver a four per cent improvement in energy efficiency, which will save 16,600 tonnes of CO2 each year.

The company is aiming to install the furnace this year, with plans for it to become fully operational next year.

It will be fuelled entirely by hydrogen from 2026, produced at Stanlow as part of the HyNet North West scheme.

The plant’s hydrogen production facility will be the first, and largest of its kind in the world and will be able to distribute hydrogen to industrial businesses in the region.

Deepak Maheshwari, Essar Oil UK chief executive, said: “We have hugely ambitious plans for Stanlow and are committed to making it the UK’s first low carbon refinery.

“By affecting a significant and rapid transition to hydrogen, we are securing the long term future of this vitally important national asset whilst also playing a key role in supporting the UK’s plans for building the low carbon economy of tomorrow. We would like to thank our community for its ongoing support of our refinery at Stanlow.”

Essar’s Stanlow refinery – which supplies 16% of the UK’s road transport fuels – sits at the heart of HyNet North West.

The initiative was designated as a Track 1 Industry Cluster by government in October 2021, and plans to produce 1GW per year of hydrogen – the equivalent to the domestic heating energy used by a major British city, for example the Liverpool City Region.

As well as being used by Essar, the hydrogen will be supplied to a wide range of businesses across the North West, including Tata Chemicals Europe, Encirc, and InterGen.

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