Air Products has awarded thyssenkrupp Uhde Chlorine Engineers a contract to supply a more than two-gigawatt (2 GW) electrolysis plant for one of the world’s largest green hydrogen projects at NEOM in Saudi Arabia. Under this contract, thyssenkrupp will engineer, procure and fabricate the plant based on their large-scale 20 megawatt (MW) alkaline water electrolysis module. Upon commissioning, the project partners – NEOM, ACWA Power and Air Products (“NEOM Green Hydrogen Company”) – will operate the facility, which will produce hydrogen to be synthesized into carbon-free ammonia for export exclusively by Air Products to global markets. Engineering and procurement activities have been initiated, and the start of production is scheduled for 2026.
Strong partnership with strong sustainability lever
In July 2020, Air Products, together with ACWA Power and NEOM, announced the signing of an agreement for world-scale green hydrogen-based ammonia production facility powered by renewable energy. thyssenkrupp was selected by its strategic partner Air Products early in the project as technology supplier and has worked intensively on early engineering and project development. The signing of the project contract is a key milestone of both companies’ joint effort over the past year to use their complementary technology, engineering and project execution strengths to develop green hydrogen production facilities. The realization of the project leverages thyssenkrupp’s large-scale technology supporting Air Products’ development of green hydrogen for sustainable transportation, chemicals and power generation.
Dr. Samir J. Serhan, Chief Operating Officer at Air Products, says: “This project milestone with thyssenkrupp furthers our strong progress at NEOM to deliver carbon-free hydrogen on a massive scale in the Kingdom and for the world. The development and execution of this innovative megaproject is one of many required to drive a successful energy transition, and we look forward to continuing to develop, build, own and operate facilities that help address the world’s significant energy and environmental challenges. This project is the kickoff to become a frontrunner in the green hydrogen economy.”
“As a world market leader in electrolysis we bring in two decisive factors to realize such gigawatt projects: With our large-scale standard module size and gigawatt cell manufacturing capacity per year together with our Joint Venture partner De Nora we are able to deliver large capacity projects today”, says Denis Krude, CEO of thyssenkrupp Uhde Chlorine Engineers. “With this gigawatt project, we are committed to invest into ramping up our manufacturing capacities further. We also aim for a strong local setup which is key to delivering customized service solutions throughout the entire plant life-cycle and enables our strategic partner in their vision to become a global decarbonization pioneer.”
