HyDN Is Building a New Hydrogen Production Plant in Jülich’s Brainergy Park
District of Düren. It is the next major milestone for the district of Düren on its way to becoming a hydrogen region: the construction of the hydrogen production plant in Jülich's Brainergy Park has now officially begun. The district of Düren and its partners celebrated this new chapter with a symbolic ground-breaking ceremony on Wednesday, July 3.
"This day marks an important step forward. As district of Düren, we want to show that it is possible to produce green hydrogen directly on site that is used regionally. A project that not only has a positive impact on climate protection, but also shows that we as a lignite region can also successfully manage structural change with the help of hydrogen and position ourselves for the future," says District Administrator Wolfgang Spelthahn.
The operator of the new hydrogen production plant is HyDN GmbH. This company is owned in equal parts by the district of Düren and Messer Industriegase GmbH (MIGG). It was founded in 2022 with the purpose of planning, building and operating the new production plant in the innovative industrial park.
"When implementing the project, we made a conscious decision to work with local and regional partners. Not only the suppliers of the production plant, but also the renewable electricity and the consumers of the green hydrogen are largely located in the Rhenish mining area. The project cooperation between the partners is going extremely well, we are on track and expect to produce green hydrogen in autumn 2025," emphasize Anne Schüssler and Frank Hopfenbach, Managing Directors of HyDN GmbH.
The first green hydrogen (H2), in other words hydrogen produced with the help of renewable energies, is primarily used in mobility. In future, it will not only be possible to refuel fuel cell buses, but also cars and trains. There are currently five H2 buses on the road in the district of Düren, which can already refuel in the Großen Tal in Düren. A further 20 vehicles will be added to the bus fleet at the end of this year. The advantage of the vehicles is that they emit environmentally friendly water vapor instead of harmful gases.
During production, water is split into its components hydrogen and oxygen with the help of electricity. The plant can produce up to 180 kilograms of hydrogen per hour at an output of ten megawatts. To put this into context: an H2 car consumes an average of one kilogram of hydrogen per 100 kilometers, a bus around six kilograms per 100 kilometers. With this output, the new production plant in Jülich is one of the first of its kind to be in operation in Germany.
The companies NEUMAN & ESSER and Messer SE & Co. KGaA (Messer) were commissioned to realize the project. NEUMAN & ESSER is supplying two NEA|HYTRON PEM electrolyzers for hydrogen production and two NEA|HOFER diaphragm compressors for compressing the hydrogen. Messer is responsible for the storage of the hydrogen produced, its filling and quality control.
"This is another important strategic project for Messer Industriegase, because in addition to the production of air gases such as oxygen, nitrogen and argon, we will also have direct access to green hydrogen from 2025. Messer is not only involved in the engineering of the hydrogen production plant, but will also take over the long-term operation of the plant and distribute the green hydrogen," says Peter Laux, Managing Director of Messer Industriegase.
"We were immediately convinced by the idea of local hydrogen production and have been in close contact with the district of Düren and MESSER for a long time. We are very pleased to be able to contribute our entire solution portfolio along the hydrogen value chain to this project as a general contractor - including the 10 MW PEM electrolyzer. In addition to the conventional diaphragm compressors for this application, we are also using our dry-running piston compressors for 500 bar discharge pressure. The piston compressor enables significantly larger delivery volumes while at the same time complying with hydrogen purity requirements. The entire system is monitored by our digital XPLORE system and kept running optimally," says Alexander Peters, Managing Partner of NEUMAN & ESSER.