Green hydrogen and the challenges to join the industry

Hychico's Renewable Energies Manager, Ariel Pérez; IMPSA's Commercial Director, Juan De Miguel; and Profertil's Strategy and Sustainable Development Manager, Sergio Nabaes were part of the panel.

The interest of companies in generating clean energies

Ariel Pérez, Balseiro's Nuclear Engineer and Hychico's Renewable Energies Manager, began his speech by saying that it is "an honor for Hychico to be part of this Forum." The company, with facilities in Comodoro Rivadavia, has two wind farms with a capacity factor of 50%. "This is where the hydrogen plant is located; it is an example of energy transition," said Perez.

"By 2007 we had installed the largest electrolyzers in the world in terms of power," stated the engineer and added, "a large part of the challenges was to integrate the hydrogen and oxygen produced to make it useful. In these 14 years we produced electricity in a motor-generator that has more than 100,000 hours of use, from almost 3,000,000 cubic meters of hydrogen that we produced."

Finally, Hychico's Renewable Energies manager explained, "we do not need to let opportunities escape because it takes decades to reach a relatively mature level of knowledge. We need to know where we are going, we need a law, a strategy and to train people who know how to make good decisions. We need Argentina to be part of the world."

Sergio Nabaes, Profertil's Strategy and Sustainable Development Manager, mentioned that his company, which is in the food business, has "the only ammonia export port in Argentina, together with a 20,000 ton storage tank, also for ammonia, so we are ready to start producing energy for a greener world."

Nabaes presented a map showing the only 38 ports in the world that can export ammonia and 88 that can take it and said, "Among those 38 ports, one is ours and it is here in Argentina, we believe that this is a source of pride and an opportunity to give to the country."

Moreover, and in order to fulfill the company's objective of starting to generate energy, Profertil's Manager confirmed that "we are working on a project, with a feasibility study together with YPF and the company Topsoe, to be able to build the first green ammonia plant for export."

"It is basically a hybrid ammonia plant in which what we do is with an electrolyzer, planned by Topsoe, with wind energy, by YPF Luz, and with the current plant we have, we increase the production to have a percentage of green ammonia for export," he added.

On the other hand, Juan De Miguel, commercial director of IMPSA, a company that develops in more than 40 countries, explained how the local industry could collaborate in the development of green hydrogen. "We have more than 50,000 megawatts installed in the world in renewable energies, which is more than the total energy of the energy matrix in Argentina," he pointed out.

"In the giga-plants project that is being talked about for the production of hydrogen, we will need renewable energy", explained De Miguel and said that IMPSA "is capable of executing projects of any of these energies."

"IMPSA has a company dedicated to monitoring, control and automation systems, which will be part of an EPC for green hydrogen. We also have a logistics and transportation company," he stated.

He also pointed out that IMPSA is developing a small hydrogen production prototype of between 35 and 50 kilowatts: "Our intention is to learn in order to complete our training and try to offer the market possibilities to solve infrastructure problems."

Finally, IMPSA's commercial director emphasized the country's needs for the future: "It is necessary to have an infrastructure to be able to execute the projects. The bill will put us in the right conditions, we understand that it is the duty of all the actors to try that the law comes out of Congress as complete as possible and covering all the expectations."