As a consortium leader, LOTOS is launching the HESTOR research project, co-financed by the National Centre for Research and Development. The project is designed to examine the efficiency of storing hydrogen obtained from surplus energy from renewable sources. Hydrogen obtained in this way could be stored in salt caverns and used in technological processes at the Company’s refinery in Gdańsk and for electricity generation.
Refining activity
As a consortium leader, LOTOS is launching the HESTOR research project, co-financed by the National Centre for Research and Development. The project is designed to examine the efficiency of storing hydrogen obtained from surplus energy from renewable sources. Hydrogen obtained in this way could be stored in salt caverns and used in technological processes at the Company’s refinery in Gdańsk and for electricity generation.
The surplus electricity used to generate hydrogen through electrolysis would be delivered by wind farms and solar power plants. Hydrogen stored in caverns would be used directly in technological processes at LOTOS’s refinery, thus reducing the need to generate hydrogen from natural gas; or for energy generation as a fuel firing gas turbines during peak demand hours.
The Company expects the project to contribute to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by balancing the fluctuating supplies of electricity from renewable sources. In a longer time horizon, hydrogen generation and storage on a larger scale would increase the share of renewable energy sources (RES) in the Poland’s energy mix, owing to better utilisation of the output of wind farms and solar power plants.
Generation of hydrogen through electrolysis during periods of surplus electricity output is believed to be the most efficient way to convert electricity into a different form of energy usable and storable on a large scale. The HESTOR project will include assessment of the quantity of hydrogen which could be stored in a cavern under given geological conditions with the cavern stability and tightness maintained, and of the operational efficiency of a hydrogen-filled cavern.
LOTOS is the Leader of the Research Consortium conducting the project, while the Consortium partners are: Operator Gazociągów Przesyłowych GAZ-SYSTEM S.A., the AGH University of Science and Technology of Kraków, Ośrodek Badawczo-Rozwojowy Górnictwa Surowców Chemicznych CHEMKOP Sp. z o.o., the Silesian University of Technology and the Warsaw University of Technology.
Communications Office, Grupa LOTOS S.A., ul. Elbląska 135, 80-718 Gdańsk, Poland, tel. (+48) 58 308 87 31, (+48) 58 308 83 88, (+48) 58 308 83 55, e-mail: media@grupalotos.pl
The project co-financed by the National Centre for Research and Development under the GEKON Programme
AGREEMENT NO. GEKON1/O2/214140/23/2015
