China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) announced that the Green Hydrogen Pilot Project in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China, has begun producing green hydrogen to replace natural-gas-based hydrogen in its refinery in Xinjiang. As China’s first green hydrogen demonstration project of over 10,000-tonne capacity and based on solar power, it is expected to produce 20,000 tonnes of green hydrogen per year that will be supplied to Sinopec’s Tahe refinery.

Sinopec’s Xinjiang Kuqa Green Hydrogen Pilot project enters operation, leading China’s green hydrogen development.

Spearheaded by Sinopec’s New Star Company, the mega project is the largest solar-to-hydrogen project in the world and the first of its kind in China that is equipped with a photovoltaic power generation complex, power transmission and transformation lines, as well as facilities for water electrolysis hydrogen production, hydrogen storage and transportation, and supporting auxiliary production.

Green hydrogen is produced by facilities powered by renewable power sources such as solar and wind energy, minimizing the carbon footprint across the entire production process. The project takes advantage of the wealth of photovoltaic resources in Kuqa to achieve 20,000 tons per annum of green hydrogen by using solar power to electrolyze water, along with the capacity to store 210,000 cubic meters of hydrogen and transport 28,000 cubic meters per hour.

As a demonstration project that serves to carve out a new path for green hydrogen refining and provide an exemplary model for green hydrogen production in China, the project supplies hydrogen to Sinopec’s Tahe Refining & Chemical to remove its fossil fuel-based electricity used for hydrogen production, which is expected to help it reduce 485,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

With a focus on hydrogen-powered transportation and green hydrogen refining, Sinopec aims to launch itself to become a new energy powerhouse that pioneers hydrogen production innovation in China, facilitating China and beyond to achieve low-carbon targets in the coming years.

With an annual hydrogen production and utilization capacity exceeding 4.5 million tons, Sinopec’s self-developed megawatt-scale PEM electrolysis hydrogen production station has entered operation, and its first hydrogen demonstration project in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which is expected to produce 30,000 metric tons of hydrogen a year, has been launched in 2023.

Sinopec Tahe is the only petrochemical enterprise of Sinopec Group in Xinjiang area. Tahe mainly processes heavy crude oil from Tahe oilfield with 12 refining units, as well as storage and transportation facilities, utilities such as water, electricity and steam, a distributed control system (DCS) for process control.

Tahe has crude oil processing capacity of 5 million tons per year, coking capacity of 2.6 million tons per year, gasoline and diesel hydro-fining capacity of 2.4 million tons per year, A-Grade asphalt production capacity of 400,000 tons per year, catalytic reforming capacity of 150,000 tons per year, gasoline isomerization of 70,000 tons per year, and sulfur production capacity of 40,000 tons per year.

Tahe Company produces unleaded gasoline, light diesel, solvent oil, asphalt, SBR modified asphalt, chemical light oil, LPG, petroleum coke, sulfur, benzene and other petroleum products.