Project HyPER reaches completion
After four years at the site, SJD’s work at Cranfield University’s innovative HyPER project has just been commissioned. The cutting-edge collaboration between the University, GTI Energy, Altrad Babcock, and Helical Energy has developed a pilot scale system to create low cost and low carbon hydrogen efficiently and in bulk quantities, for use in many applications. The project has been sponsored by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
The demand for efficiently produced hydrogen is expected to increase as it provides an ideal alternative to natural gas in areas such as industry, power generation and transport.
The new process is expected to significantly lower the cost and carbon footprint of hydrogen production.
Current production methods mean that the waste product of hydrogen production, carbon dioxide, needs to be cleaned which requires a carbon capture plant at the end of the process. In this new technique, carbon dioxide capture is integral to the operation and actually increases hydrogen yields.
Following numerous projects at the campus helping innovation projects such as the AVIATE+ building where SJD was asked to complete the project as principal contractor, and at the MUEAVI road, for driverless vehicle testing, when SJD installed street lighting and data for simulations, the team was asked to join the HyPER team early in the project to start on pre-contract work.
This required SJD to gather all the information necessary to design and develop a plan for the layout of equipment and produce the cabling schedule and infrastructure solution.
Dr Peter Clough, project lead, said: “We had the aim of building the pilot plant to create something that’s never been done before. We knew very little about electrical engineering and SJD knew very little about hydrogen or chemistry but working together, we found a way of talking to each other across diagrams and drawings that really worked well and were able to come up with a solution. This has been a valuable project for the university and for all the partners.
“The project, backed by the UK Government, GTI Energy and Altrad Babcock, had a stretched budget, however SJD was able to help us reduce the costs whilst still providing a safe, electrical infrastructure that was fit for purpose, and pragmatic.”
The project required thousands of metres of cabling for the power supply, the control wiring and the bespoke control panel designed by Thermon and HC Controls for which SJD completed the cable calculations.
SJD designed the distribution for the wiring looms to the thermocouples that monitors the temperature of HyPER’s equipment. With only a simple line diagram, the team had to take into account the complexity of the layout and the different levels and locations of each thermocouple. They installed multiple junction boxes, on different levels of the main structure and wired each thermocouple individually back to this point and installed a multicore cable from the control panel.
The project required a high level of detail, for example, the hydrogen pipes are made of special alloys of stainless steel, and these were welded on site and measured to their exact location, taken off site to be x-rayed to check for any weaknesses, then returned for installation.
Richard Harrison, SJD’s Senior Contracts Manager said: “We installed the gas, fire and flame detection systems. Everything on the project was designed to be ‘intrinsically safe’ so that there is no possibility of sparks being produced anywhere.”
The hydrogen ‘reactor’ is located in the middle of the plant. It has multiple heating elements that operate at very high temperatures of 600-700 degrees centigrade to provide heat to the process. So SJD needed to create a bespoke design and select the correct cabling, capable of tolerating the heat.
One of the many challenges for the team was supply of parts and components some of which were sourced overseas so delays in receiving stock required flexibility in programming.
Many of the components had to be adapted to enable them to be securely connected requiring the team to find creative solutions.
Richard continues: “The connection points of the heater elements were sited so close to the reactor and other hot areas, that we needed to source a flexible ingress protection rated conduit that was resistant to the heat being produced from the elements and could withstand the environment. We then had to look at the type of cabling that was to go within the flexible conduit, which would need to tolerate a higher temperature, as these are connected directly to each element. We found a silicon single core cable that was the right choice.”
Dr Tosin Elusakin, HyPER’s programme manager and senior technical officer said: “SJD played a pivotal role in ironing out the design inconsistencies and were able to go out to the market and source components that closed out the loop.
“The team has helped us to create this pilot plant which has taken us from technology readiness level four to level six, helping us get another step closer to producing hydrogen more efficiently, and more cost effectively.
“SJD was able to provide a quick turnaround for the project’s needs and excellently interfaced with other contractors on the project.”
All the controls are housed in a green shipping container and with so many safety controls, multiple control panels and equipment, SJD prepared a scale layout and design to ensure that all equipment could be contained and accessed easily.
During the four-year project SJD had two to four engineers on site at any given time.
SJD’s Managing Director Ruth Devine, MBE, said: “We’re really excited to have been part of this cutting-edge project, helping the development of innovative solutions to adopt more sustainable fuels.”
The project has just been given the greenlight to be scaled up to a plant seven times the size of the one at Cranfield and will be located in Chicago, United States.
The HyPER project won the Academic Excellence in Hydrogen Research and Innovation award in the H2 Awards, 2023.
